Society sanctions my life; does it not pay for my extravagances? Why
does Providence pay me every morning my income, which I spend every
evening? Why are hospitals built for us? And Providence did not put
good and evil on either hand for us to select what tires and pains us.
I should be very foolish if I did not amuse myself."
"And how about others?" asked Emile.
"Others? Oh, well, they must manage for themselves. I prefer laughing
at their woes to weeping over my own. I defy any man to give me the
slightest uneasiness."
"What have you suffered to make you think like this?" asked Raphael.
"I myself have been forsaken for an inheritance," she said, striking
an attitude that displayed all her charms; "and yet I had worked night
and day to keep my lover! I am not to be gulled by any smile or vow,
and I have set myself to make one long entertainment of my life."
"But does not happiness come from the soul within?" cried Raphael.
"It may be so," Aquilina answered; "but is it nothing to be conscious
of admiration and flattery; to triumph over other women, even over the
most virtuous, humiliating them before our beauty and our splendor?
Not only so; one day of our life is worth ten years of a bourgeoise
existence, and so it is all summed up.
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