“Left alone, I looked about me.
“The room was richly furnished, but in the pretentious
taste of a parvenu. Rather fine engravings of
the last century represented women with powdered hair
dressed high surprised by gentlemen in interesting
positions. Another lady, lying in a large bed,
was teasing with her foot a little dog, lost in the
sheets. One drawing showed four feet, bodies
concealed behind a curtain. The large room, surrounded
by soft couches, was entirely impregnated with that
enervating and insipid odor which I had already noticed.
There seemed to be something suspicious about the
walls, the hangings, the exaggerated luxury, everything.
“I approached the window to look into the garden.
It was very big, shady, beautiful. A wide path
wound round a grass plot in the midst of which was
a fountain, entered a shrubbery and came out farther
away. And, suddenly, yonder, in the distance,
between two clumps of bushes, three women appeared.
They were walking slowly, arm in arm, clad in long,
white tea-gowns covered with lace. Two were blondes
and the other was dark-haired. Almost immediately
they disappeared again behind the trees. I stood
there entranced, delighted with this short and charming
apparition, which brought to my mind a whole world
of poetry. They had scarcely allowed themselves
to be seen, in just the proper light, in that frame
of foliage, in the midst of that mysterious, delightful
park. It seemed to me that I had suddenly seen
before me the great ladies of the last century, who
were depicted in the engravings on the wall. And
I began to think of the happy, joyous, witty and amorous
times when manners were so graceful and lips so approachable.
“A deep voice male me jump. Patience had
come in, beaming, and held out his hands to me.
“He looked into my eyes with the sly look which
one takes when divulging secrets of love, and, with
a Napoleonic gesture, he showed me his sumptuous parlor,
his park, the three women, who had reappeared in the
back of it, then, in a triumphant voice, where the
note of pride was prominent, he said:
“’And to think that I began with nothing—my
wife and my sister-in-law!’”
“I really think you must be mad, my dear, to
go for a country walk in such weather as this.
You have had some very strange notions for the last
two months. You drag me to the seaside in spite
of myself, when you have never once had such a whim
during all the forty-four years that we have been
married. You chose Fecamp, which is a very dull
town, without consulting me in the matter, and now
you are seized with such a rage for walking, you who
hardly ever stir out on foot, that you want to take
a country walk on the hottest day of the year.
Ask d’Apreval to go with you, as he is ready
to gratify all your whims. As for me, I am going
back to have a nap.”
Madame de Cadour turned to her old friend and said:
