“And you brought me yesterday those detestable peas!”

“Ah,” shrugging his shoulders, “madame told me to buy what I saw.  I saw peas.  I bought them.”

“Well, understand now, once for all:  whenever you see mushrooms, no matter what I ordered, you buy them.  Do you hear?”

“No, madame.  Surely I cannot buy mushrooms unless madame orders them.  Madame’s disposition is too quick.”

“But I do order them.  Stupid!  I do order them.  I tell you to buy them every day.”

“And if there are none in the market every day?”

“Go away!  Get out of my sight!  I do not want to see you.  Ah, it is unendurable!  I must—­I must get rid of him!” This last was not a threat, as Jules knew only too well.  It was merely a habitual exclamation.

During the colloquy Mr. Horace, leaning back in his arm-chair, raised his eyes, and caught the reflected portrait of madame in the mirror before him—­the reflection so much softer and prettier, so much more ethereal, than the original painting.  Indeed, seen in the mirror, that way, the portrait was as refreshing as the most charming memory.  He pointed to it when madame, with considerable loss of temper, regained her seat.

“It is as beautiful as the past,” he explained most unnaturally, for he and his friend had a horror of looking at the long, long past, which could not fail to remind them of—­what no one cares to contemplate out of church.  Making an effort toward some determination which a subtle observer might have noticed weighing upon him all the evening, he added:  “And, apropos of the past—­”

“Hein?” interrogated the old lady, impatiently, still under the influence of her irascibility about the mushrooms.

He moved his chair closer, and bent forward, as if his communication were to be confidential.

“Ah, bah!  Speak louder!” she cried.  “One would suppose you had some secret to tell.  What secrets can there be at our age?” She took up her cards and began to play.  There could be no one who bothered herself less about the forms of politeness.

“Yes, yes,” answered Mr. Horace, throwing himself back into his chair; “what secrets can there be at our age?”

The remark seemed a pregnant one to him; he gave himself up to it.  One must evidently be the age of one’s thoughts.  Mr. Horace’s thoughts revealed him the old man he was.  The lines in his face deepened into wrinkles; his white mustache could not pretend to conceal his mouth, worsened by the loss of a tooth or two; and the long, thin hand that propped his head was crossed with blue, distended veins.  “At the last judgment”—­it was a favorite quotation with him—­“the book of our conscience will be read aloud before the whole company.”

But the old lady, deep in her game, paid no more heed to his quotation than to him.  He made a gesture toward her portrait.

“When that was painted, Josephine—­”