Have you discovered, by the way, whether the business of Miss
Wilberforce has been settled?"
Mr. Heard shook his head."
"Is that the person," enquired the Count, "who is reported to drink to
excess? I have never spoken to her. She belongs presumably to the lower
classes--to those who extract from alcohol the pleasurable emotions
which we derive from a good play, or music, or a picture gallery."
"She is a lady."
"Indeed? Then she has relapsed into the intemperance of her inferiors.
That is not pretty."
"Temperance!" said the bishop. "Another of those words which I am
always being obliged to use. Pray tell me, Count, what you mean by
temperance."
"I should call it the exercise of our faculties and organs in such a
manner as to combine the maximum of pleasure with the minimum of pain."
"And who is the judge of what constitutes the dividing line between use
and abuse?"
"We cannot do better, I imagine, than go to our own bodies for an
answer to that question. They will tell us exactly how far we may
proceed with impunity.
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