Rabourdin helped the chambermaid to do the rooms; for the cook went early to market, and the man-servant was cleaning the silver, folding the napkins, and polishing the glasses.  The ill-advised individual who might happen, through an oversight of the porter, to enter Madame Rabourdin’s establishment about eleven o’clock in the morning would have found her in the midst of a disorder the reverse of picturesque, wrapped in a dressing-gown, her hair ill-dressed, and her feet in old slippers, attending to the lamps, arranging the flowers, or cooking in haste an extremely unpoetic breakfast.  The visitor to whom the mysteries of Parisian life were unknown would certainly have learned for the rest of his life not to set foot in these greenrooms at the wrong moment; a woman caught in her matin mysteries would ever after point him out as a man capable of the blackest crimes; or she would talk of his stupidity and indiscretion in a manner to ruin him.  The true Parisian woman, indulgent to all curiosity that she can put to profit, is implacable to that which makes her lose her prestige.  Such a domiciliary invasion may be called, not only (as they say in police reports) an attack on privacy, but a burglary, a robbery of all that is most precious, namely, credit.  A woman is quite willing to let herself be surprised half-dressed, with her hair about her shoulders.  If her hair is all her own she scores one; but she will never allow herself to be seen “doing” her own rooms, or she loses her pariostre, —­that precious seeming-to-be!

Madame Rabourdin was in full tide of preparation for her Friday dinner, standing in the midst of provisions the cook had just fished from the vast ocean of the markets, when Monsieur des Lupeaulx made his way stealthily in.  The general-secretary was certainly the last man Madame Rabourdin expected to see, and so, when she heard his boots creaking in the ante-chamber, she exclaimed, impatiently, “The hair-dresser already!”—­an exclamation as little agreeable to des Lupeaulx as the sight of des Lupeaulx was agreeable to her.  She immediately escaped into her bedroom, where chaos reigned; a jumble of furniture to be put out of sight, with other heterogeneous articles of more or rather less elegance,—­a domestic carnival, in short.  The bold des Lupeaulx followed the handsome figure, so piquant did she seem to him in her dishabille.  There is something indescribably alluring to the eye in a portion of flesh seen through an hiatus in the undergarment, more attractive far than when it rises gracefully above the circular curve of the velvet bodice, to the vanishing line of the prettiest swan’s-neck that ever lover kissed before a ball.  When the eye dwells on a woman in full dress making exhibition of her magnificent white shoulders, do we not fancy that we see the elegant dessert of a grand dinner?  But the glance that glides through the disarray of muslins rumpled in sleep enjoys, as it were, a feast of stolen fruit glowing between the leaves on a garden wall.