“I know that I am very unreasonable, and I am often vexed with myself for having so little control over my feelings, but it is beyond my strength.  I have a tired sensation, a disgust for everything, something which I can not overcome.  It is an inexplicable physical and moral languor, for which, for this reason, I see no remedy.  I am weary and I suffer; I am sure it will end in my being ill.  Sometimes I wish I were dead.  However, I have really no reason to be unhappy.  I suppose I am happy—­I ought to be happy.”

“Truly, I can not understand in the least the women of today.  Formerly, upon exciting occasions, we had a good nervous attack and all was over; the crisis passed, we became amiable again, put on rouge and went to a ball.  Now it is languor, ennui, stomach troubles—­all imagination and humbug!  The men are just as bad, and they call it spleen!  Spleen! a new discovery, an English importation!  Fine things come to us from England; to begin with, the constitutional government!  All this is perfectly ridiculous.  As for you, Clemence, you ought to put an end to such childishness.  Two months ago, in Paris, you did not have any of the rest that you enjoy here.  I had serious reasons for wishing to delay my departure; my apartment to refurnish, my neuralgia which still troubles me—­and Constance, who had just been in the hands of the doctor, was hardly in a condition to travel, poor creature!  You would listen to nothing; we had to submit to your caprices, and now—­”

“But, aunt, you admitted yourself that it was the proper thing for me to do, to join my husband.  Was it not enough, and too much, to have left him to pass the entire winter alone here while I was dancing in Paris?”

“It was very proper, of course, and I do not blame you.  But why does the very thing you so much desired two months ago bore you so terribly now?  In Paris you talked all the time of Bergenheim, longed only for Bergenheim, you had duties to fulfil, you wished to be with your husband; you bothered and wore me out with your conjugal love.  When back at Bergenheim, you dream and sigh for Paris.  Do not shake your head; I am an old aunt to whom you pay no heed, but who sees clearly yet.  Will you do me the favor to tell me what it is that you regret in Paris at this time of the year, when there are no balls or parties, and not one human being worth visiting, for all the people you know are in the country?  Is it because—­”

Mademoiselle de Corandeuil did not finish her sentence, but she put a severity into these three words which seemed to condense all the quintessence of prudery that a celibacy of sixty years could coagulate in an old maid’s heart.

Clemence raised her eyes to her aunt’s face as if to demand an explanation.

It was such a calm, steady glance that the latter could not help being impressed by it.

“Well,” said she, softening her voice, “there is no necessity for putting on such queenly airs; we are here alone, and you know that I am a kind aunt to you.  Now, then, speak freely—­have you left anything or any person in Paris, the remembrance of which makes your sojourn here more tiresome than it really is?  Any of your adorers of the winter?”