is newspaper article, this terrible article which threatened
so seriously the influence of such a wealthy man? Unfortunately my
duties held me fast; I could not go down to the butlers pantry or the
dressing-room, to talk with the coachmen, the footmen and outriders whom
I saw standing at the foot of the stairs, amusing themselves by making
fun of the people who went up. What can you expect? The masters give
themselves too many airs. How could one help laughing to see the Marquis
and Marquise de Bois-l'Hery sail by with a haughty air and empty
stomachs, after all the stories we have heard about Monsieur's business
arrangements and Madame's dresses? And then the Jenkins family, so
affectionate, so united, the attentive doctor throwing a lace shawl over
his wife's shoulders for fear she may take cold in the hall; she,
tricked out and smiling, dressed all in velvet, with a train yards long,
leaning on her husband's arm as if to say: "How happy I am!" when I know
that, ever since the death of the Irishwoman, his lawful wife, the
doctor has been thinking of getting rid of his old incubus so that he
can marry a young woman, and that the old incubus passes her nights in
despair, in wearing away with tears what beauty she still has.

The amusing part of it was that not one of them all suspected the quips
and jokes that were spit out at them as they passed, the vile things
that their trains swept up from the vestibule carpet, and the whole crew
assumed disdainful airs fit to make one die with laughter.

The two ladies I have named, the Governor's wife, a little Corsican
woman whose heavy eyebrows, white teeth and ruddy cheeks, dark in the
lower part, make her look like a clean-shaved Auvergnat--a clever
creature by the way, and always laughing except when her husband looks
at other women--these with a few Levantines with diadems of gold or
pearls, less resplendent than ours but in the same style, wives of
upholsterers, jewellers, dealers who supply the household regularly,
with shoulders as extensive as shop-fronts and dresses in which the
material was not sparingly used; and lastly, several wives of clerks at
the _Caisse Territoriale_, with rustling dresses and devil a sou in
their pockets,--such was the representation of the fair sex at that
function, some thirty ladies lost among myriads of black coats; one
might as well say that there were none at all there. From time to time,
Cassagne, Laporte and Grandvarlet, who were carry