“I don’t know,” said Bertin, at which reply the Duchess and the Countess exchanged a smile.

The leaves were opening, the familiar nightingales of that Parisian garden were singing already among the tender verdure, and when, as the carriage approached the lake, it joined the long file of other vehicles at a walk, there was an incessant exchange of salutations, smiles, and friendly words, as the wheels touched.  The procession seemed now like the gliding of a flotilla in which were seated very well-bred ladies and gentlemen.  The Duchess, who was bowing every moment before raised hats or inclined heads, appeared to be passing them in review, calling to mind what she knew, thought, or supposed of these people, as they defiled before her.

“Look, dearest, there is the lovely Madame Mandeliere again—­the beauty of the Republic.”

In a light and dashing carriage, the beauty of the Republic allowed to be admired, under an apparent indifference to this indisputable glory, her large dark eyes, her low brow beneath a veil of dusky hair, and her mouth, which was a shade too obstinate in its lines.

“Very beautiful, all the same,” said Bertin.

The Countess did not like to hear him praise other women.  She shrugged her shoulders slightly, but said nothing.

But the young girl, in whom the instinct of rivalry suddenly awoke, ventured to say:  “I do not find her beautiful at all.”

“What!  You do not think her beautiful?” said the painter.

“No; she looks as if she had been dipped in ink.”

The Duchess, delighted, burst into laughter.

“Bravo, little one!” she cried.  “For the last six years half the men in Paris have been swooning at the feet of that negress!  I believe that they sneer at us.  Look at the Comtesse de Lochrist instead.”

Alone, in a landau with a white poodle, the Countess, delicate as a miniature, a blond with brown eyes, whose grace and beauty had served for five or six years as the theme for the admiration of her partisans, bowed to the ladies, with a fixed smile on her lips.

But Nanette exhibited no greater enthusiasm than before.

“Oh,” she said, “she is no longer young!”

Bertin, who usually did not at all agree with the Countess in the daily discussions of these two rivals, felt a sudden irritation at the stupid intolerance of this little simpleton.

“Nonsense!” he said.  “Whether one likes her or not, she is charming; and I only hope that you may become as pretty as she.”

“Pooh! pooh!” said the Duchess.  “You notice women only after they have passed the thirtieth year.  The child is right.  You admire only passee beauty.”

“Pardon me!” he exclaimed; “a woman is really beautiful only after maturing, when the expression of her face and eyes has become fully developed!”

He enlarged upon this idea that the first youthful freshness is only the gloss of riper beauty; he demonstrated that men of the world were wise in paying but little attention to young girls in their first season, and that they were right in proclaiming them beautiful only when they passed into their later period of bloom.