Madame Desvarennes could not resist the inclination of finding out whether Micheline knew what was going on, and one morning when the young wife came down to see her mother, dressed in a lovely pink gown, the mistress, while teasing her daughter, said, carelessly: 

“It seems your husband lost heavily last night.”

Micheline looked astonished at Madame Desvarennes, and in a quiet voice replied: 

“A good host may not win from his guests; it would look as if he invited them to rob them.  Losses at cards are included in the costs of a reception.”

Madame Desvarennes thought that her daughter had become a very grand lady, and had soon acquired expanded ideas.  But she dared not say anything more.  She dreaded a quarrel with her daughter, and would have sacrificed everything to retain her cajoling ways.

She threw herself into her work with renewed vigor.

“If the Prince spends large sums,” she said to herself, “I will earn larger ones.  There can be no hole dug deep enough by him that I shall not be able, to fill up.”

And she made the money come in at the door so that her son-in-law might throw it out of the window.

One fine day these great people who visited at the mansion in the Rue Saint-Dominique hastened away to the country.  September had arrived, bringing with it the shooting season.  The Prince and Micheline settled themselves at Cernay, not as in the first days of their marriage as lovers who sought quietude, but as people sure of their happiness, who wished to make a great show.  They took all the carriages with them, and there was nothing but bustle and movement.  The four keepers, dressed in the Prince’s livery, came daily for orders as to shooting arrangements.  And every week shoals of visitors arrived, brought from the station in large breaks drawn by four horses.

The princely dwelling was in its full splendor.  There was a continual going and coming of fashionable worldlings.  From top to bottom of the castle was a constant rustling of silk dresses; groups of pretty women, coming downstairs with peals of merry laughter and singing snatches from the last opera.  In the spacious hall they played billiards and other games, while one of the gentlemen performed on the large organ.  There was a strange mixture of freedom and strictness.  The smoke of Russian cigarettes mingled with the scent of opoponax.  An elegant confusion which ended about six o’clock in a general flight, when the sportsmen came home, and the guests went to their rooms.  An hour afterward all these people met in the large drawing-room; the ladies in low-bodied evening dresses; the gentlemen in dress-coats and white satin waistcoats, with a sprig of mignonette and a white rose in their buttonholes.  After dinner, they danced in the drawing-rooms, where a mad waltz would even restore energy to the gentlemen tired out by six hours spent in the field.