The sacrifice of her religion soon followed that of her costume.  Mme. Hemerlingue had long abandoned the practices of Mohammedan religion, when M. le Merquier, their friend and mentor in Paris, showed them that the baroness’s public conversion would open to her the doors of that section of the Parisian world whose access became more and more difficult as society became more democratic.  Once the Faubourg Saint-Germain was conquered, all the others would follow.  And, in fact, when, after the announcement of the baptism, they learned that the greatest ladies in France could be seen at the Baroness Hemerlingue’s Saturdays, Mmes.  Gugenheim, Furenberg, Caraiscaki, Maurice Trott—­all wives of millionaires celebrated on the markets of Tunis—­gave up their prejudices and begged to be invited to the former slave’s receptions.  Mme. Jansoulet alone—­newly arrived with a stock of cumbersome Oriental ideas in her mind, like her ostrich eggs, her narghile pipe, and the Tunisian bric-a-brac in her rooms—­protested against what she called an impropriety, a cowardice, and declared that she would never set her foot at her house.  Soon a little retrograde movement was felt round the Gugenheims, the Caraiscaki, and the other people, as happens at Paris every time when some irregular position, endeavouring to establish itself, brings on regrets and defections.  They had gone too far to draw back, but they resolved to make the value of their good-will, of their sacrificed prejudices, felt, and the Baroness Marie well understood the shade of meaning in the protecting tone of the Levantines, treating her as “My dear child,” “My dear good girl,” with an almost contemptuous pride.  Thenceforward her hatred of the Jansoulets knew no bounds—­the complicated ferocious hatred of the seraglio, with strangling and the sack at the end, perhaps more difficult to arrive at in Paris than on the banks of the lake of El Bahaira, but for which she had already prepared the stout sack and the cord.

One can imagine, knowing all this, what was the surprise and agitation of this corner of exotic society, when the news spread, not only that the great Afchin—­as these ladies called her—­had consented to see the baroness, but that she would pay her first visit on her next Saturday.  Neither the Fuernbergs nor the Trotts would wish to miss such an occasion.  On her side, the baroness did everything in her power to give the utmost brilliancy to this solemn reparation.  She wrote, she visited, and succeeded so well, that in spite of the lateness of the season, Mme. Jansoulet, on arriving at four o’clock at the Faubourg Saint-Honore, would have seen drawn up before the great arched doorway, side by side with the discreet russet livery of the Princess de Dion, and of many authentic blasons, the pretentious and fictitious arms, the multicoloured wheels of a crowd of plutocrat equipages, and the tall powdered lackeys of the Caraiscaki.