Near the beginning of the story, as Miss Rousset is generously sharing the contents of her food basket (including wine) with her nine traveling companions, Maupassant inserts a moment of verbal irony:
An embarrassing thing confronted them when they opened the first bottle of Bordeaux: they had but one cup. Each passed it after having tasted. Cornudet alone, for politeness without doubt, placed his lips at the spot left humid by his fair neighbor.
In describing how Cornudet “for politeness without doubt, placed his lips at the spot [on the cup] left humid by his fair neighbor,” Maupassant is saying the opposite of what he means. He is subtly using sarcasm to communicate how Cornudet drank from the same spot at Miss Rousset because he is sexually attracted to her and wanted his lips to touch the same spot her lips touched, not because he wanted to be polite. (Cornudet’s desire for Miss Rousset becomes even more blatant later in the story, when he propositions her for sex.)
This moment highlights how, though Cornudet considers himself to be a sophisticated and revolutionary politician—he’s the only democrat in the carriage—he is just as lewd and opportunistic as the other upper class characters in the story. He sexualizes Miss Rousset because of her profession rather than respecting her as the traveling companion that she is.
