Madame Martin said to M. Daniel Salomon that she wished to consult him particularly on the picture of a group of beautiful children.

“You will tell me if it pleases you.  You may also give me your opinion, Monsieur Vence, unless you disdain such trifles.”

M. Daniel Salomon looked at Paul Vence through his monocle with disdain.  Paul Vence surveyed the drawing-room.

“You have beautiful things, Madame.  That would be nothing.  But you have only beautiful things, and all serve to set off your own beauty.”

She did not conceal her pleasure at hearing him speak in that way.  She regarded Paul Vence as the only really intelligent man she knew.  She had appreciated him before his books had made him celebrated.  His ill-health, his dark humor, his assiduous labor, separated him from society.  The little bilious man was not very pleasing; yet he attracted her.  She held in high esteem his profound irony, his great pride, his talent ripened in solitude, and she admired him, with reason, as an excellent writer, the author of powerful essays on art and on life.

Little by little the room filled with a brilliant crowd.  Within the large circle of armchairs were Madame de Wesson, about whom people told frightful stories, and who kept, after twenty years of half-smothered scandal, the eyes of a child and cheeks of virginal smoothness; old Madame de Morlaine, who shouted her witty phrases in piercing cries; Madame Raymond, the wife of the Academician; Madame Garain, the wife of the exminister; three other ladies; and, standing easily against the mantelpiece, M. Berthier d’Eyzelles, editor of the ‘Journal des Debats’, a deputy who caressed his white beard while Madame de Morlaine shouted at him: 

“Your article on bimetallism is a pearl, a jewel!  Especially the end of it.”

Standing in the rear of the room, young clubmen, very grave, lisped among themselves: 

“What did he do to get the button from the Prince?”

“He, nothing.  His wife, everything.”

They had their own cynical philosophy.  One of them had no faith in promises of men.

“They are types that do not suit me.  They wear their hearts on their hands and on their mouths.  You present yourself for admission to a club.  They say, ’I promise to give you a white ball.  It will be an alabaster ball—­a snowball!  They vote.  It’s a black ball.  Life seems a vile affair when I think of it.”

“Then don’t think of it.”

Daniel Salomon, who had joined them, whispered in their ears spicy stories in a lowered voice.  And at every strange revelation concerning Madame Raymond, or Madame Berthier, or Princess Seniavine, he added, negligently: 

“Everybody knows it.”

Then, little by little, the crowd of visitors dispersed.  Only Madame Marmet and Paul Vence remained.

The latter went toward Madame Martin, and asked: 

“When do you wish me to introduce Dechartre to you?”