ng-houses; she passing her days in bed, wearing in her hair a
diadem of pearls worth three hundred thousand francs which she never
took off, befuddling her brain with smoking, living as in a harem,
admiring herself in the glass, adorning herself, in company with a few
other Levantines, whose supreme distraction consisted in measuring with
their necklaces arms and legs which rivalled each other in plumpness,
and bearing children about whom she never gave herself the least
trouble, whom she never used to see, who had not even cost her a pang,
for she gave birth to them under chloroform. A lump of white flesh
perfumed with musk. And, as Jansoulet used to say with pride: "I married
a Demoiselle Afchin!"

Under the sky of Paris and its cold light the disillusion began.
Determined to settle down, to receive, to give entertainments, the Nabob
had brought his wife over with the idea of setting her at the head of
the establishment; but when he saw the arrival of that display of gaudy
draperies of Palais-Royal jewelry, and all the strange paraphernalia in
her suite, he had the vague impression of a Queen Pomare in exile.
The fact was that now he had seen real women of the world, and he made
comparisons. After having planned a great ball to celebrate her arrival,
he prudently changed his mind. Besides, Mme. Jansoulet desired to see
nobody. Here her natural indolence was increased by the home-sickness
which she suffered, from the first hour of her coming, by the chilliness
of a yellow fog and the dripping rain. She passed several days without
getting up, weeping aloud like a child, saying that it was in order to
cause her death that she had been brought to Paris, and not permitting
her women to do even the least thing for her. She lay there bellowing
among the laces of her pillow, with her hair bristling in disorder about
her diadem, the windows of the room closed, the curtains drawn close,
the lamps lighted night and day, crying out that she wanted to go
away-y, to go away-y; and it was pitiful to see, in that funeral gloom,
the half-unpacked trunks scattered over the carpets, the frightened
maids, the negresses crouched around their mistress in her nervous
attack, they also groaning, with haggard eyes like those dogs of artic
travellers that go mad without the sun.

The Irish doctor, called in to deal with all this trouble, had no
success with his fatherly manners, the pretty phrases that issued from
his compressed lips. The Lev