That was the general tone of that space of time, but, of course, it was not always that.  I used to emerge now and then to breakfast sympathetically with my aunt, sometimes to sit through a meal with the two of them.  I danced attendance on them singly; paid depressing calls with my aunt; calls on the people in the Faubourg; people without any individuality other than a kind of desiccation, the shrivelled appearance and point of view of a dried pippin.  In revenge, they had names that startled one, names that recalled the generals and flaneurs of an impossibly distant time; names that could hardly have had any existence outside the memoirs of Madame de Sevigne, the names of people that could hardly have been fitted to do anything more vigorous than be reflected in the mirrors of the Salle des Glaces.  I was so absolutely depressed, so absolutely in a state of suspended animation, that I seemed to conform exactly to my aunt’s ideas of what was desirable in me as an attendant on her at these functions.  I used to stand behind chairs and talk, like a good young man, to the assorted Peres and Abbes who were generally present.

And then I used to go home and get the atmospheres of these people.  I must have done it abominably badly, for the notes that brought Polehampton’s cheques were accompanied by the bravos of that gentleman and the assurances that Miss Polehampton liked my work—­liked it very much.

I suppose I exhibited myself in the capacity of the man who knew—­who could let you into a thing or two.  After all, anyone could write about students’ balls and the lakes in the Bois, but it took someone to write “with knowledge” of the interiors of the barred houses in the Rue de l’Universite.

Then, too, I attended the more showy entertainments with my sister.  I had by now become so used to hearing her styled “your sister” that the epithet had the quality of a name.  She was “mademoiselle votre soeur,” as she might have been Mlle. Patience or Hope, without having anything of the named quality.  What she did at the entertainments, the charitable bazaars, the dismal dances, the impossibly bad concerts, I have no idea.  She must have had some purpose, for she did nothing without.  I myself descended into fulfilling the functions of a rudimentarily developed chaperon—­functions similar in importance to those performed by the eyes of a mole.  I had the maddest of accesses of jealousy if she talked to a man—­and such men—­or danced with one.  And then I was forever screwing my courage up and feeling it die away.  We used to drive about in a coupe, a thing that shut us inexorably together, but which quite as inexorably destroyed all opportunities for what one calls making love.  In smooth streets its motion was too glib, on the pave it rattled too abominably.  I wanted to make love to her—­oh, immensely, but I was never in the mood, or the opportunity was never forthcoming.  I used to have the wildest fits of