Again Marguerite seemed to regret these tardy spontaneous eulogies which were chilling their interview.  So again she changed the trend of her chatter.

“And your family?  Have you seen them?” . . .

Desnoyers had been to his father’s home before starting for the Chapelle Expiatoire.  A stealthy entrance into the great house on the avenue Victor Hugo, and then up to the first floor like a tradesman.  Then he had slipt into the kitchen like a soldier sweetheart of the maids.  His mother had come there to embrace him, poor Dona Luisa, weeping and kissing him frantically as though she had feared to lose him forever.  Close behind her mother had come Luisita, nicknamed Chichi, who always surveyed him with sympathetic curiosity as if she wished to know better a brother so bad and adorable who had led decent women from the paths of virtue, and committed all kinds of follies.  Then Desnoyers had been greatly surprised to see entering the kitchen with the air of a tragedy queen, a noble mother of the drama, his Aunt Elena, the one who had married a German and was living in Berlin surrounded with innumerable children.

“She has been in Paris a month.  She is going to make a little visit to our castle.  And it appears that her eldest son—­my cousin, ‘The Sage,’ whom I have not seen for years—­is also coming here.”

The home interview had several times been interrupted by fear.  “Your father is at home, be careful,” his mother had said to him each time that he had spoken above a whisper.  And his Aunt Elena had stationed herself at the door with a dramatic air, like a stage heroine resolved to plunge a dagger into the tyrant who should dare to cross the threshold.  The entire family was accustomed to submit to the rigid authority of Don Marcelo Desnoyers.  “Oh, that old man!” exclaimed Julio, referring to his father.  “He may live many years yet, but how he weighs upon us all!”

His mother, who had never wearied of looking at him, finally had to bring the interview to an end, frightened by certain approaching sounds.  “Go, he might surprise us, and he would be furious.”  So Julio had fled the paternal home, caressed by the tears of the two ladies and the admiring glances of Chichi, by turns ashamed and proud of a brother who had caused such enthusiasm and scandal among her friends.

Marguerite also spoke of Senor Desnoyers.  A terrible tyrant of the old school with whom they could never come to an understanding.

The two remained silent, looking fixedly at each other.  Now that they had said the things of greatest urgency, present interests became more absorbing.  More immediate things, unspoken, seemed to well up in their timid and vacillating eyes, before escaping in the form of words.  They did not dare to talk like lovers here.  Every minute the cloud of witnesses seemed increasing around them.  The woman with the dogs and the red wig was passing with greater frequency, shortening her turns through the square