desire to be in fashion.

She wished to bring herself into notice. Everything attracted her,
tempted her. She belonged, body and soul, to that machine with its
manifold gearing, brilliant, noisy, active, puffing like a locomotive,
that is called _chic_. _Chic_, that indefinite, indefinable word,
changeable and subtle like a capillary hygrometer, is a Parisian tyranny
that grinds out more fashionable lives than the King of Dahomey offers
as victims on his great feast days. For Blanche, everything in this most
stimulated, over-excited, feverishly deranged life, was reduced to these
two inevitable conclusions: what was _chic_ and what was not _chic_. Not
only was this the inevitable guide in reference to style, clothing, hat,
gloves, costume, material, jewelry, the dress that she should wear, but
also the book that should be read, the play that should be heard, the
operatic score that should be strummed on the piano, the bonbon that
should be presented, the opinion that one should hold, the picture one
should comment upon, all was hopelessly a question of _chic_.

Madame Gerson would have preferred to be compromised in the matter of
her honor rather than to be ridiculed as to her opinions or to express
an idea that was not chic. The necessary result was that all this
woman's conversation--and she often came to see Madame Vaudrey,--was on
well-known topics; so that Adrienne knew in advance what Blanche's
opinion was upon such and such a matter, and that ideas could only pass
muster with Madame Gerson when they bore the stamp of chic, just as a
coin, to escape suspicion of being counterfeit, must bear the stamp of
the mint.

Blanche would have been heartbroken if she had not been seen in the
President's salon on the occasion of a great reception at the Elysee; at
the ministry, on the evening of a comedy; if she had not been in the
front rank of the ladies' gallery on the day of interpellation at the
Assembly; if she had not been greeted from the top of the grand stand by
some minister, on Grand Prix day; if she had not been the first at the
varnishing; the first at the general rehearsals, a little _chic_,--the
first everywhere. Slender, delicate, but hardy as a Parisian, she
dragged her exhausted husband, with her hand of fine steel, through
receptions, balls, soirees, salons, talking loudly, judging everything,
chattering, cackling and haranguing, delighted to mount, with head
erect, the grand staircase of a minister and