“Oh, what a beautiful day!  How good it is to live!” murmured the Countess.

The painter contemplated both mother and daughter in the dazzling light.  Certainly, they were different, but at the same time so much alike that the latter was veritably a continuation of the former, made of the same blood, the same flesh, animated by the same life.  Their eyes, above all, those blue eyes flecked with tiny black drops, of such a brilliant blue in the daughter, a little faded in the mother, fixed upon him a look so similar that he expected to hear them make the same replies.  And he was surprised to discover, as he made them laugh and talk, that before him were two very distinct women, one who had lived and one who was about to live.  No, he did not foresee what would become of that child when her young mind, influenced by tastes and instincts that were as yet dormant, should have expanded and developed amid the life of the world.  This was a pretty little new person, ready for chances and for love, ignored and ignorant, who was sailing out of port like a vessel, while her mother was returning, having traversed life and having loved!

He was touched at the thought that she had chosen himself, and that she preferred him still, this woman who had remained so pretty, rocked in that landau, in the warm air of springtime.

As he expressed his gratitude to her in a glance, she divined it, and he thought he could feel her thanks in the rustle of her robe.

In his turn he murmured:  “Oh, yes, what a beautiful day!”

When they had taken up the Duchess, in the Rue de Varenne, they spun along at a swift pace toward the Invalides, crossed the Seine, and reached the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, going up toward the Arc de triomphe de l’Etoile in the midst of a sea of carriages.

The young girl was seated beside Olivier, riding backward, and she opened upon this stream of equipages wide and wondering eager eyes.  Occasionally, when the Duchess and the Countess acknowledged a salutation with a short movement of the head, she would ask “Who is that?” Bertin answered:  “The Pontaiglin,” “the Puicelci,” “the Comtesse de Lochrist,” or “the beautiful Madame Mandeliere.”

Now they were following the Avenue of the Bois de Boulogne, amid the noise and the rattling of wheels.  The carriages, a little less crowded than below the Arc de Triomphe, seemed to struggle in an endless race.  The cabs, the heavy landaus, the solemn eight-spring vehicles, passed one another over and over again, distanced suddenly by a rapid victoria, drawn by a single trotter, bearing along at a reckless pace, through all that rolling throng, bourgeois and aristocratic, through all societies, all classes, all hierarchies, an indolent young woman, whose bright and striking toilette diffused among the carriages it touched in passing a strange perfume of some unknown flower.

“Who is that lady?” Annette inquired.