eptre
that makes fashion in France what the navy is to England. This patriotic
ardor which leads a nation to sacrifice everything to appearances--to
the "paroistre," as d'Aubigne said in the days of Henri IV.--is the
cause of those vast secret labors which employ the whole of a Parisian
woman's morning, when she wishes, as Madame Rabourdin wished, to keep
up on twelve thousand francs a year the style that many a family with
thirty thousand does not indulge in. Consequently, every Friday,--the
day of her dinner parties,--Madame Rabourdin helped the chambermaid to
do the rooms; for the cook went early to market, and the man-servant was
cleaning the silver, folding the napkins, and polishing the glasses.
The ill-advised individual who might happen, through an oversight of the
porter, to enter Madame Rabourdin's establishment about eleven o'clock
in the morning would have found her in the midst of a disorder
the reverse of picturesque, wrapped in a dressing-gown, her hair
ill-dressed, and her feet in old slippers, attending to the lamps,
arranging the flowers, or cooking in haste an extremely unpoetic
breakfast. The visitor to whom the mysteries of Parisian life were
unknown would certainly have learned for the rest of his life not to
set foot in these greenrooms at the wrong moment; a woman caught in her
matin mysteries would ever after point him out as a man capable of the
blackest crimes; or she would talk of his stupidity and indiscretion
in a manner to ruin him. The true Parisian woman, indulgent to all
curiosity that she can put to profit, is implacable to that which makes
her lose her prestige. Such a domiciliary invasion may be called,
not only (as they say in police reports) an attack on privacy, but a
burglary, a robbery of all that is most precious, namely, CREDIT. A
woman is quite willing to let herself be surprised half-dressed, with
her hair about her shoulders. If her hair is all her own she scores one;
but she will never allow herself to be seen "doing" her own rooms, or
she loses her pariostre,--that precious /seeming-to-be/!

Madame Rabourdin was in full tide of preparation for her Friday dinner,
standing in the midst of provisions the cook had just fished from the
vast ocean of the markets, when Monsieur des Lupeaulx made his way
stealthily in. The general-secretary was certainly the last man Madame
Rabourdin expected to see, and so, when she heard his boots creaking
in the ante-chamber, she exclaimed, im