on than
kings expect, and fret their souls because those above them are not
brought down to their level, as if greatness could be little, as if
power existed without force.

President du Ronceret was a tall, spare man with a receding forehead and
scanty, auburn hair. He was wall-eyed, his complexion was blotched, his
lips thin and hard, his scarcely audible voice came out like the husky
wheezings of asthma. He had for a wife a great, solemn, clumsy
creature, tricked out in the most ridiculous fashion, and outrageously
overdressed. Mme. la Presidente gave herself the airs of a queen; she
wore vivid colors, and always appeared at balls adorned with the turban,
dear to the British female, and lovingly cultivated in out-of-the-way
districts in France. Each of the pair had an income of four or five
thousand francs, which with the President's salary, reached a total
of some twelve thousand. In spite of a decided tendency to parsimony,
vanity required that they should receive one evening in the week.
Du Croisier might import modern luxury into the town, M. and Mme. de
Ronceret were faithful to the old traditions. They had always lived in
the old-fashioned house belonging to Mme. du Ronceret, and had made no
changes in it since their marriage. The house stood between a garden and
a courtyard. The gray old gable end, with one window in each story,
gave upon the road. High walls enclosed the garden and the yard, but the
space taken up beneath them in the garden by a walk shaded with
chestnut trees was filled in the yard by a row of outbuildings. An old
rust-devoured iron gate in the garden wall balanced the yard gateway,
a huge, double-leaved carriage entrance with a buttress on either side,
and a mighty shell on the top. The same shell was repeated over the
house-door.

The whole place was gloomy, close, and airless. The row of iron-gated
openings in the opposite wall, as you entered, reminded you of prison
windows. Every passer-by could look in through the railings to see how
the garden grew; the flowers in the little square borders never seemed
to thrive there.

The drawing-room on the ground floor was lighted by a single window on
the side of the street, and a French window above a flight of steps,
which gave upon the garden. The dining-room on the other side of the
great ante-chamber, with its windows also looking out into the garden,
was exactly the same size as the drawing-room, and all three apartments
were in harmony