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There is no such thing as a
marriage market. English mothers and fathers do not sell their
daughters for money. Such a thing is monstrous and impossible."
"Then it was all lies I read in the book?"
"All lies," said I.
I hope the genial shade of the great satirist has forgiven me.
"Why do they put lies in books?"
"To accentuate the Truth, so that it shall prevail," I answered.
This was too hard a nut for Carlotta to crack. She was silent
for a moment. She reverted, ruefully, to the intelligible.
"I thought I was beautiful," she said.
"Who told you so?"
"Pasquale."
"Pasquale has no sense," said I. "There are men to whom all
women who are not seventy and toothless and rheumy at the eyes
are beautiful. Pasquale has said the same to every woman he has
met. He is a Lothario and a Don Juan and a Caligula and a
Faublas and a Casanova."
"And he tells lies, too?"
"Millions of them," said I. "He contracts with their father
Beelzebub for a hundred gross a day."
"Pasquale is very pretty and he makes me laugh and I like him,"
said Carlotta.


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