on the part of others.  Nature had given her an elegant, slender figure, which could sway lightly at a word, black eyes of oriental shape, able, like those of the Chinese women, to see out of their corners.  She well knew how to manage a soft, insinuating voice, which threw a tender charm into every word, even such as she merely chanced to utter; her feet were like those we see in portraits where the painter boldly lies and flatters his sitter in the only way which does not compromise anatomy.  Her complexion, a little yellow by day, like that of most brunettes, was dazzling at night under the wax candles, which brought out the brilliancy of her black hair and eyes.  Her slender and well-defined outlines reminded an artist of the Venus of the Middle Ages rendered by Jean Goujon, the illustrious sculptor of Diane de Poitiers.

Des Lupeaulx stopped in the doorway, and leaned against the woodwork.  This ferret of ideas did not deny himself the pleasure of spying upon sentiment, and this woman interested him more than any of the others to whom he had attached himself.  Des Lupeaulx had reached an age when men assert pretensions in regard to women.  The first white hairs lead to the latest passions, all the more violent because they are astride of vanishing powers and dawning weakness.  The age of forty is the age of folly,—­an age when man wants to be loved for himself; whereas at twenty-five life is so full that he has no wants.  At twenty-five he overflows with vigor and wastes it with impunity, but at forty he learns that to use it in that way is to abuse it.  The thoughts that came into des Lupeaulx’s mind at this moment were melancholy ones.  The nerves of the old beau relaxed; the agreeable smile, which served as a mask and made the character of his countenance, faded; the real man appeared, and he was horrible.  Rabourdin caught sight of him and thought, “What has happened to him? can he be disgraced in any way?” The general-secretary was, however, only thinking how the pretty Madame Colleville, whose intentions were exactly those of Madame Rabourdin, had summarily abandoned him when it suited her to do so.  Rabourdin caught the sham statesman’s eyes fixed on his wife, and he recorded the look in his memory.  He was too keen an observer not to understand des Lupeaulx to the bottom, and he deeply despised him; but, as with most busy men, his feelings and sentiments seldom came to the surface.  Absorption in a beloved work is practically equivalent to the cleverest dissimulation, and thus it was that the opinions and ideas of Rabourdin were a sealed book to des Lupeaulx.  The former was sorry to see the man in his house, but he was never willing to oppose his wife’s wishes.  At this particular moment, while he talked confidentially with a supernumerary of his office who was destined, later, to play an unconscious part in a political intrigue resulting from the death of La Billardiere, he watched, though half-abstractedly, his wife and des Lupeaulx.