ht it wise to shut the window and the door of the boudoir, so
that no one should get in and listen. She even took the precaution of
shutting the glass door of the drawing-room, smiling on her daughter
and her cousin, whom she saw seated in an old summer-house at the end
of the garden. As she came back she left the cardroom door open, so as
to hear if any one should open that of the drawing-room to come in.

As she came and went, the Baroness, seen by nobody, allowed her face
to betray all her thoughts, and any one who could have seen her would
have been shocked to see her agitation. But when she finally came back
from the glass door of the drawing-room, as she entered the cardroom,
her face was hidden behind the impenetrable reserve which every woman,
even the most candid, seems to have at her command.

During all these preparations--odd, to say the least--the National
Guardsman studied the furniture of the room in which he found himself.
As he noted the silk curtains, once red, now faded to dull purple by
the sunshine, and frayed in the pleats by long wear; the carpet, from
which the hues had faded; the discolored gilding of the furniture; and
the silk seats, discolored in patches, and wearing into strips
--expressions of scorn, satisfaction, and hope dawned in succession
without disguise on his stupid tradesman's face. He looked at himself
in the glass over an old clock of the Empire, and was contemplating
the general effect, when the rustle of her silk skirt announced the
Baroness. He at once struck at attitude.

After dropping on to a sofa, which had been a very handsome one in the
year 1809, the Baroness, pointing to an armchair with the arms ending
in bronze sphinxes' heads, while the paint was peeling from the wood,
which showed through in many places, signed to Crevel to be seated.

"All the precautions you are taking, madame, would seem full of
promise to a----"

"To a lover," said she, interrupting him.

"The word is too feeble," said he, placing his right hand on his
heart, and rolling his eyes in a way which almost always makes a woman
laugh when she, in cold blood, sees such a look. "A lover! A lover?
Say a man bewitched----"

"Listen, Monsieur Crevel," said the Baroness, too anxious to be able
to laugh, "you are fifty--ten years younger than Monsieur Hulot, I
know; but at my age a woman's follies ought to be justified by beauty,
youth, fame, superior merit--some one of the splendid qualities which