t look her age; one would have set her down
as being twenty-eight at most, for her eyes, above all, which were
filled with the dark blue shadow of her long eyelashes, retained the
glowing light of youth. Bred in a divided family, so that she used to
spend one month with the Marquis de Chouard, another with the marquise,
she had been married very young, urged on, doubtless, by her father,
whom she embarrassed after her mother's death. A terrible man was the
marquis, a man about whom strange tales were beginning to be told, and
that despite his lofty piety! Fauchery asked if he should have the honor
of meeting him. Certainly her father was coming, but only very late; he
had so much work on hand! The journalist thought he knew where the old
gentleman passed his evenings and looked grave. But a mole, which he
noticed close to her mouth on the countess's left cheek, surprised him.
Nana had precisely the same mole. It was curious. Tiny hairs curled up
on it, only they were golden in Nana's case, black as jet in this. Ah
well, never mind! This woman enjoyed nobody's embraces.

"I have always felt a wish to know Queen Augusta," she said. "They say
she is so good, so devout. Do you think she will accompany the king?"

"It is not thought that she will, madame," he replied.

She had no lovers: the thing was only too apparent. One had only to
look at her there by the side of that daughter of hers, sitting so
insignificant and constrained on her footstool. That sepulchral drawing
room of hers, which exhaled odors suggestive of being in a church,
spoke as plainly as words could of the iron hand, the austere mode of
existence, that weighed her down. There was nothing suggestive of her
own personality in that ancient abode, black with the damps of years. It
was Muffat who made himself felt there, who dominated his surroundings
with his devotional training, his penances and his fasts. But the sight
of the little old gentleman with the black teeth and subtle smile
whom he suddenly discovered in his armchair behind the group of ladies
afforded him a yet more decisive argument. He knew the personage. It
was Theophile Venot, a retired lawyer who had made a specialty of church
cases. He had left off practice with a handsome fortune and was now
leading a sufficiently mysterious existence, for he was received
everywhere, treated with great deference and even somewhat feared,
as though he had been the representative of a mighty force, an occul