“Left alone, I looked about me.

“The room was richly furnished, but in the pretentious taste of a parvenu.  Rather fine engravings of the last century represented women with powdered hair dressed high surprised by gentlemen in interesting positions.  Another lady, lying in a large bed, was teasing with her foot a little dog, lost in the sheets.  One drawing showed four feet, bodies concealed behind a curtain.  The large room, surrounded by soft couches, was entirely impregnated with that enervating and insipid odor which I had already noticed.  There seemed to be something suspicious about the walls, the hangings, the exaggerated luxury, everything.

“I approached the window to look into the garden.  It was very big, shady, beautiful.  A wide path wound round a grass plot in the midst of which was a fountain, entered a shrubbery and came out farther away.  And, suddenly, yonder, in the distance, between two clumps of bushes, three women appeared.  They were walking slowly, arm in arm, clad in long, white tea-gowns covered with lace.  Two were blondes and the other was dark-haired.  Almost immediately they disappeared again behind the trees.  I stood there entranced, delighted with this short and charming apparition, which brought to my mind a whole world of poetry.  They had scarcely allowed themselves to be seen, in just the proper light, in that frame of foliage, in the midst of that mysterious, delightful park.  It seemed to me that I had suddenly seen before me the great ladies of the last century, who were depicted in the engravings on the wall.  And I began to think of the happy, joyous, witty and amorous times when manners were so graceful and lips so approachable.

“A deep voice male me jump.  Patience had come in, beaming, and held out his hands to me.

“He looked into my eyes with the sly look which one takes when divulging secrets of love, and, with a Napoleonic gesture, he showed me his sumptuous parlor, his park, the three women, who had reappeared in the back of it, then, in a triumphant voice, where the note of pride was prominent, he said: 

“’And to think that I began with nothing—­my wife and my sister-in-law!’”

ABANDONED

“I really think you must be mad, my dear, to go for a country walk in such weather as this.  You have had some very strange notions for the last two months.  You drag me to the seaside in spite of myself, when you have never once had such a whim during all the forty-four years that we have been married.  You chose Fecamp, which is a very dull town, without consulting me in the matter, and now you are seized with such a rage for walking, you who hardly ever stir out on foot, that you want to take a country walk on the hottest day of the year.  Ask d’Apreval to go with you, as he is ready to gratify all your whims.  As for me, I am going back to have a nap.”

Madame de Cadour turned to her old friend and said: