plump and fresh; at forty-six
she was as short as ever, but she looked dried up. An arched forehead
and thin lips, that had been softly colored once, lent a soured look to
a face naturally disdainful, and now grown hard and unpleasant with a
long course of absolute domestic rule. Time had deepened her fair hair
to a harsh chestnut hue; the pride of office, intensified by suppressed
envy, looked out of eyes that had lost none of their brightness nor
their satirical expression. As a matter of fact, Mme. Camusot de
Marville felt almost poor in the society of self-made wealthy bourgeois
with whom Pons dined. She could not forgive the rich retail druggist,
ex-president of the Commercial Court, for his successive elevations as
deputy, member of the Government, count and peer of France. She could
not forgive her father-in-law for putting himself forward instead of his
eldest son as deputy of his arrondissement after Popinot's promotion to
the peerage. After eighteen years of services in Paris, she was still
waiting for the post of Councillor of the Court of Cassation for her
husband. It was Camusot's own incompetence, well known at the Law
Courts, which excluded him from the Council. The Home Secretary of 1844
even regretted Camusot's nomination to the presidency of the Court
of Indictments in 1834, though, thanks to his past experience as an
examining magistrate, he made himself useful in drafting decrees.

These disappointments had told upon Mme. de Marville, who, moreover, had
formed a tolerably correct estimate of her husband. A temper naturally
shrewish was soured till she grew positively terrible. She was not old,
but she had aged; she deliberately set herself to extort by fear all
that the world was inclined to refuse her, and was harsh and rasping
as a file. Caustic to excess she had few friends among women; she
surrounded herself with prim, elderly matrons of her own stamp, who lent
each other mutual support, and people stood in awe of her. As for poor
Pons, his relations with this fiend in petticoats were very much those
of a schoolboy with the master whose one idea of communication is the
ferule.

The Presidente had no idea of the value of the gift. She was puzzled by
her cousin's sudden access of audacity.

"Then, where did you find this?" inquired Cecile, as she looked closely
at the trinket.

"In the Rue de Lappe. A dealer in second-hand furniture there had just
brought it back with him from a chateau that i