ibuted the most piercing note to the concert. Marry
Mlle. Malo! A young girl who lived alone! Travelled! Spent her time with
foreigners--with musicians and painters! _A young girl!_ Of course, if
she had been a married woman--that is, a widow--much as they would have
preferred a young girl for Jean, or even, if widow it had to be, a widow
of another type--still, it was conceivable that, out of affection for
him, they might have resigned themselves to his choice. But a young
girl--bring such a young girl to Rechamp! Ask them to receive her under
the same roof with their little Simone, their innocent Alain....

He had a bad hour of it; but he held his own, keeping silent while
they screamed, and stiffening as they began to wobble from exhaustion.
Finally he took his mother apart, and tried to reason with her. His
arguments were not much use, but his resolution impressed her, and he
saw it. As for his father, nobody was afraid of Monsieur de Rechamp.
When he said: "Never--never while I live, and there is a roof on
Rechamp!" they all knew he had collapsed inside. But the grandmother
was terrible. She was terrible because she was so old, and so clever
at taking advantage of it. She could bring on a valvular heart attack by
just sitting still and holding her breath, as Jean and his mother had
long since found out; and she always treated them to one when things
weren't going as she liked. Madame de Rechamp promised Jean that she
would intercede with her mother-in-law; but she hadn't much faith in
the result, and when she came out of the old lady's room she whispered:
"She's just sitting there holding her breath."

The next day Jean himself advanced to the attack. His grandmother was
the most intelligent member of the family, and she knew he knew it, and
liked him for having found it out; so when he had her alone she listened
to him without resorting to any valvular tricks. "Of course," he
explained, "you're much too clever not to understand that the times have
changed, and manners with them, and that what a woman was criticised for
doing yesterday she is ridiculed for not doing to-day. Nearly all the
old social thou-shalt-nots have gone: intelligent people nowadays don't
give a fig for them, and that simple fact has abolished them. They
only existed as long as there was some one left for them to scare." His
grandmother listened with a sparkle of admiration in her ancient eyes.
"And of course," Jean pursued, "that can't be the