Why, religion at this moment means you and
me; it is property, and the future of our children! Ah! let us not be
selfish! Individualism is the disease of the age, and religion is the
only remedy; it unites families which your laws put asunder,' and so
forth. Then she plunges into some neo-Christian speech sprinkled with
political notions which is neither Catholic nor Protestant--but moral?
Oh! deuced moral!--in which you may recognize a fag end of every
material woven by modern doctrines, at loggerheads together."
The women could not help laughing at the airs by which Blondet
illustrated his satire.
"This explanation, dear Count Adam," said Blondet, turning to the
Pole, "will have proved to you that the 'perfect lady' represents the
intellectual no less than the political muddle, just as she is
surrounded by the showy and not very lasting products of an industry
which is always aiming at destroying its work in order to replace it
by something else. When you leave her you say to yourself: She
certainly has superior ideas! And you believe it all the more because
she will have sounded your heart with a delicate touch, and have asked
you your secrets; she affects ignorance, to learn everything; there
are some things she never knows, not even when she knows them.
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