Hotchkiss monologue — Getting Married

How can he? Ive fought seven duels with sabres. Ive muscles of iron. Nothing hurts me: not even broken bones. Fighting is absolutely uninteresting to me because it doesnt frighten me or amuse me; and I always win. Your husband is in all these respects an average man, probably. He will be horribly afraid of me; and if under the stimulus of your presence, and for your sake, and because it is the right thing to do among vulgar people, he were to attack me, I should simply defeat him and humiliate him [he gradually gets his hands on the chair and takes it from her, as his words go home phrase by phrase]. Sooner than expose him to that, you would suffer a thousand stolen kisses, wouldnt you?