They passed into the dining-room.  After they were seated, Musadieu resumed the discussion.

“For my part, I say that men should be thin, because they are formed for exercises that require address and agility, incompatible with corpulency.  But the women’s case is a little different.  Don’t you think so, Corbelle?”

Corbelle was perplexed, the Duchess being stout and his own wife more than slender.  But the Baroness came to the rescue of her husband, and resolutely declared herself in favor of slimness.  The year before that, she declared, she had been obliged to struggle with the beginning of embonpoint, over which she soon triumphed.

“Tell us how you did it,” demanded Madame de Guilleroy.

The Baroness explained the method employed by all the fashionable women of the day.  One must never drink while eating; but an hour after the repast a cup of tea may be taken, boiling hot.  This method succeeded with everyone.  She cited astonishing cases of fat women who in three months had become more slender than the blade of a knife.  The Duchess exclaimed in exasperation: 

“Good gracious, how stupid to torture oneself like that!  You like nothing any more—­nothing—­not even champagne.  Bertin, as an artist, what do you think of this folly?”

“Mon Dieu, Madame, I am a painter and I simply arrange the drapery, so it is all the same to me.  If I were a sculptor I might complain.”

“But as a man, which do you prefer?”

“I?  Oh, a certain rounded slimness—­what my cook calls a nice little corn-fed chicken.  It is not fat, but plump and delicate.”

The comparison caused a laugh; but the incredulous Countess looked at her daughter and murmured: 

“No, it is very much better to be thin; slender women never grow old.”

This point also was discussed by the company; and all agreed that a very fat person should not grow thin too rapidly.

This observation gave place to a review of women known in society and to new discussions on their grace, their chic and beauty.  Musadieu pronounced the blonde Marquise de Lochrist incomparably charming, while Bertin esteemed as a beauty Madame Mandeliere, with her brunette complexion, low brow, her dusky eyes and somewhat large mouth, in which her teeth seemed to sparkle.

He was seated beside the young girl, and said suddenly, turning to her: 

“Listen to me, Nanette.  Everything that we have just been saying you will hear repeated at least once a week until you are old.  In a week you will know all that society thinks about politics, women, plays, and all the rest of it.  Only an occasional change of names will be necessary—­names of persons and titles of works.  When you have heard us all express and defend our opinions, you will quietly choose your own among those that one must have, and then you need never trouble yourself to think of anything more, never.  You will only have to rest in that opinion.”