The Firm of Nucingen

Excerpt

You know how slight the partitions are between the private rooms of fashionable restaurants in Paris; Very’s largest room, for instance, is cut in two by a removable screen.  This Scene is not laid at Very’s, but in snug quarters, which for reasons of my own I forbear to specify.  We were two, so I will say, like Henri Monnier’s Prudhomme, “I should not like to compromise her!”