ousin
who, though younger, was stronger than herself, never wholly trusted
her. Besides, out of sheer modesty, she would never have told her
domestic sorrows to any one but God.

It may here be well to add that the Baron's house preserved all its
magnificence in the eyes of Lisbeth Fischer, who was not struck, as the
parvenu perfumer had been, with the penury stamped on the shabby chairs,
the dirty hangings, and the ripped silk. The furniture we live with is
in some sort like our own person; seeing ourselves every day, we end,
like the Baron, by thinking ourselves but little altered, and still
youthful, when others see that our head is covered with chinchilla,
our forehead scarred with circumflex accents, our stomach assuming the
rotundity of a pumpkin. So these rooms, always blazing in Betty's
eyes with the Bengal fire of Imperial victory, were to her perennially
splendid.

As time went on, Lisbeth had contracted some rather strange old-maidish
habits. For instance, instead of following the fashions, she expected
the fashion to accept her ways and yield to her always out-of-date
notions. When the Baroness gave her a pretty new bonnet, or a gown in
the fashion of the day, Betty remade it completely at home, and spoilt
it by producing a dress of the style of the Empire or of her old
Lorraine costume. A thirty-franc bonnet came out a rag, and the gown a
disgrace. On this point, Lisbeth was as obstinate as a mule; she would
please no one but herself and believed herself charming; whereas this
assimilative process--harmonious, no doubt, in so far as that it stamped
her for an old maid from head to foot--made her so ridiculous, that,
with the best will in the world, no one could admit her on any smart
occasion.

This refractory, capricious, and independent spirit, and the
inexplicable wild shyness of the woman for whom the Baron had four
times found a match--an employe in his office, a retired major, an
army contractor, and a half-pay captain--while she had refused an army
lacemaker, who had since made his fortune, had won her the name of the
Nanny Goat, which the Baron gave her in jest. But this nickname only met
the peculiarities that lay on the surface, the eccentricities which
each of us displays to his neighbors in social life. This woman, who, if
closely studied, would have shown the most savage traits of the peasant
class, was still the girl who had clawed her cousin's nose, and who, if
she had not been trained to