also Olivier Bertin, they
were similar in all respects, and only the difference in age made them
appear unlike.

"How much she has changed in three years!" said the painter. "I should
not have recognized her, and I don't dare to _tutoyer_ the young lady!"

The Countess laughed. "The idea! I should like to hear you say 'you' to
Annette!"

The young girl, whose future gay audacity was already apparent under an
air of timid playfulness, replied: "It is I who shall not dare to say
'thou' to Monsieur Bertin."

Her mother smiled.

"Yes, continue the old habit--I will allow you to do so," she said. "You
will soon renew your acquaintance with him."

But Annette shook her head.

"No, no, it would embarrass me," she said.

The Duchess embraced her, and examined her with all the interest of a
connoisseur.

"Look me in the face, my child," she said. "Yes, you have exactly the
same expression as your mother; you won't be so bad by-and-by, when you
have acquired more polish. And you must grow a little plumper--not very
much, but a little. You are very thin."

"Oh, don't say that!" exclaimed the Countess.

"Why not?"

"It is so nice to be slender. I intend to reduce myself at once."

But Madame de Mortemain took offense, forgetting in her anger the
presence of a young girl.

"Oh, of course, you are all in favor of bones, because you can dress
them better than flesh. For my part, I belong to the generation of fat
women! To-day is the day of thin ones. They make me think of the lean
kine of Egypt. I cannot understand how men can admire your skeletons. In
my time they demanded more!"

She subsided amid the smiles of the company, but added, turning to
Annette:

"Look at your mamma, little one; she does very well; she has attained
the happy medium--imitate her."

They passed into the dining-room. After they were seated, Musadieu
resumed the discussion.

"For my part, I say that men should be thin, because they are formed
for exercises that require address and agility, incompatible with
corpulency. But the women's case is a little different. Don't you think
so, Corbelle?"

Corbelle was perplexed, the Duchess being stout and his own wife more
than slender. But the Baroness came to the rescue of her husband, and
resolutely declared herself in favor of slimness. The year before that,
she declared, she had been obliged to struggle with the beginning of
_embonpoint_, over which she soon triumphed.

"Tell us how you d