ivate room which she filled with the
portraits of her father and with a thousand personal souvenirs, around
which she kept up flowers.

Madame de Trecoeur, like the greater number of young girls who marry their
cousins, had married very young. She was left a widow at twenty-eight, and
her mother, the Baroness de Pers, who was still living, and who was even
of the liveliest, was not long in suggesting discreetly to her the
propriety of a second marriage. After having exhausted the practical and,
in fact, quite sensible reasons that seemed to urge that course, the
baroness then came down to the sentimental reasons:

"In good faith, my poor child," she said, "you have not had, up too this
time, your just share of happiness in this world. I would not speak ill of
your husband, since he is dead; but, _entre nous_, he was a horrid brute.
Mon Dieu! charming at times, I grant you,--since I have been caught
myself--like all worthless scamps! but in fact, beastly, beastly! Well,
certainly, I shall not undertake to say that marriage is ever a state of
perfect bliss; nevertheless it is the best thing that has been imagined up
to this time, to enjoy life decently among respectable people. You are in
the flower of your age--you are quite good-looking, quite--and, by the
way, it will do you no harm to wear your skirts a little higher up behind,
with a proper sort of bustle; for you don't even know what they wear now,
my poor pet. Here, look! It's horrible, I know; but what can we do? we
must not attract attention. In short, what I meant to tell you is that you
still have all that is necessary, and even more than is necessary, to fix
a husband--if indeed there are any that can be fixed, which I hope is the
case--otherwise, we should have to despair wholly of Providence, if it did
not have some compensation in store for us after all our trials. It is
already a manifest sign of its kindness that you should have recovered
your _embonpoint_, my darling! Kiss your mother. Come, now, when is our
pretty little woman going to be married?"

There was no maternal exaggeration whatever in the compliments which the
baroness was addressing to Clotilde. All Paris looked upon her with the
same eyes as her mother. She had never been so attractive as now, and she
had always been infinitely so. Her person, reposed in the peace of her
mourning, had then the bright lustre of a fine fruit, ripe and fresh. Her
black eyes full of timid tenderness, her pure