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COUN

. Ah! Madam!

JU

. Ah! Madam!

COUN

. Madam, I beg of you!

JU

. Madam, I beg of you!

COUN

. Oh! Madam!

JU

. Oh! Madam!

COUN

. Pray, Madam!

JU

. Pray, Madam!

COUN

. Now really, Madam!

JU

. Now really, Madam!

COUN

. I am in my own house, Madam! We are agreed as to that. Do you take me for a provincial, Madam?

JU

. Oh! Heaven forbid, Madam!

SCENE VIII

.–THE COUNTESS, JULIA, ANDREE (who brings a glass of water), CRIQUET.

COUN

. (to ANDREE). Get along with you, you hussy. I drink with a salver. I tell you that you must go and fetch me a salver.

AND

. Criquet, what’s a salver?

CRI

. A salver?

AND

. Yes.

CRI

. I don’t know.

COUN

. (to ANDREE). Will you move, or will you not?

AND

. We don’t either of us know what a salver is.

COUN

. Know, then, that it is a plate on which you put the glass.

SCENE IX

.–THE COUNTESS, JULIA.

COUN

. Long live Paris! It is only there that one is well waited upon; there a glance is enough.

SCENE X

.–THE COUNTESS, JULIA, ANDREE (who brings a glass of water, with a plate on the top of it, CRIQUET.

COUN

. Is that what I asked you for, dunderhead? It is under that you must put the plate.

AND

. That is easy to do. (She breaks the glass in trying to put it on the plate.)

COUN

. You stupid girl! You shall really pay for the glass; you shall, I promise you!

AND

. Very well, Ma’am, I will pay you for it.

COUN

. But did you ever see such an awkward loutish girl? such a …

AND

. I say, Ma’am, if I am to pay for the glass, I won’t be scolded into the bargain.

COUN

. Get out of my sight.

SCENE XI

.–THE COUNTESS, JULIA.

COUN

. Really, Madam, small towns are strange places. In them there is no respect of persons, and I have just been making a few calls at houses where they drove me almost to despair; so little regard did they pay to my rank.

JU

. Where could you expect them to have learnt manners? They have never been to Paris.

COUN

. Still, they might learn, if they would only listen to one; but what I think too bad is that they will persist in saying that they know as much as I do–I who have spent two months in Paris, and have seen the whole court.

JU

. What absurd people!

COUN

. They are unbearable in the impertinent equality with which they treat people. For, in short, there ought to be a certain subordination in things; and what puts me out of all patience is that a town upstart, whether with two days’ gentility to boast of or with two hundred years’, should have impudence enough to say that he is as much of a gentleman as my late husband, who lived in the country, kept a pack of hounds, and took the title of Count in all the deeds that he signed.