“Your husband,” suddenly interrupted Mademoiselle de Corandeuil, for she held the praise of others in sovereign displeasure, “is a Bergenheim like all the Bergenheims present, past, and future, including your little sister-in-law, who appears more as if she had been brought up with boys than at the ‘Sacred Heart.’  He is a worthy son of his father there,” said she, pointing to one of the portraits near the young Royal-Nassau officer; “and he was the most brutal, unbearable, and detestable of all the dragoons in Lorraine; so much so that he got into three quarrels at Nancy in one month, and at Metz, over a game of checkers, he killed the poor Vicomte de Megrigny, who was worth a hundred of him and danced so well!  Some one described Bergenheim as being ’proud as a peacock, as stubborn as a mule, and as furious as a lion!’ Ugly race! ugly race!  What I say to you now, Clemence, is to excuse your husband’s faults, for it would be time lost to try to correct them.  However, all men are alike; and since you are Madame de Bergenheim, you must accept your fate and bear it as well as possible.  And then, if you have your troubles, you still have your good aunt to whom you can confide them and who will not allow you to be tyrannized over.  I will speak to your husband.”

Clemence saw, from the first words of this tirade, that she must arm herself with resignation; for anything which concerned the Bergenheims aroused one of the hobbies which the old maid rode with a most complacent spite; so she settled herself back in her chair like a person who would at least be comfortable while she listened to a tiresome discourse, and busied herself during this lecture caressing with the tip of a very shapely foot the top of one of the andirons.

“But, aunt,” said she at last, when the tirade was over, and she gave a rather drawling expression to her voice, “I can not understand why you have taken this idea into your head that Christian renders me unhappy.  I repeat it, it is impossible that one should be kinder to me than he, and, on my side, I have the greatest respect and friendship for him.”

“Very well, if he is such a pearl of husbands, if you live so much like turtle-doves-and, to tell the truth, I do not believe a word of it—­what causes this ennui of which you complain and which has been perfectly noticeable for some time?  When I say ennui, it is more than that; it is sadness, it is grief?  You grow thinner every day; you are as pale as a ghost; just at this moment, your complexion is gone; you will end by being a regular fright.  They say that it is the fashion to be pale nowadays; a silly notion, indeed, but it will not last, for complexion makes the woman.”

The old lady said this like a person who had her reasons for not liking pale complexions, and who gladly took pimples for roses.

Madame de Bergenheim bowed her head as if to acquiesce in this decision, and then resumed in her drawling voice: