are to me!
Yes, yes, don't leave me any more. Stay with me always. Life frightens
and disgusts me. I see so much hypocrisy in it, so much falsehood." And
the old woman arranged for herself a silken and embroidered nest in this
house so like a traveller's camp laden with treasures from every land,
and the suggested dual life began for these two different natures.

It was no small sacrifice that Constance had made for the dear demon in
quitting her Fontainebleau retreat for Paris, which inspired her with
terror. Ever since the day when this dancer, with her extravagant
caprices, who made princely fortunes flow and disappear through her five
open fingers, had descended from her triumphant position, a little of
its dazzling glitter still in her eyes, and had attempted to resume
an ordinary existence, to manage her little income and her modest
household, she had been the object of a thousand impudent exploitations,
of frauds that were easy in view of the ignorance of this poor butterfly
that was frightened by reality and came into collision with all its
unknown difficulties. Living in Felicia's house, the responsibility
became still more serious by reason of the wastefulness introduced long
ago by the father and continued by the daughter, two artists knowing
nothing of economy. She had, moreover, other difficulties to conquer.
She found the studio insupportable with its permanent atmosphere of
tobacco smoke, an impenetrable cloud for her, in which the discussions
on art, the analysis of ideas, were lost and which infallibly gave her a
headache. "Chaff," above all, frightened her. As a foreigner, as at
one time a divinity of the green-room, brought up on out-of-date
compliments, on gallantries _a la Dorat_, she did not understand it,
and would feel terrified in the presence of the wild exaggerations, the
paradoxes of these Parisians refined by the liberty of the studio.

That kind of thing was intimidating to her who had never possessed wit
save in the vivacity of her feet, and reduced her simply to the rank of
a lady-companion; and, seeing this amiable old dame sitting, silent and
smiling, her knitting in her lap, like one of Chardin's _bourgeoises_,
or hastening by the side of her cook up the long Rue de Chaillot, where
the nearest market happened to be, one would never have guessed that
that simple old body had ruled kings, princes, the whole class
of amorous nobles and financiers, at the caprice of her step and
pirouett