feel the joy of plunging
her little feet into the official moquettes as if her heels had been
made for state carpets; swelling with pride when she heard the usher,
amid the hubbub of the reception, call loudly the name which meant the
fashionable couple, a couple found at every fete:

"Monsieur and Madame Gerson!"

While the husband, fatigued, weary, left his office heavy-headed, after
having eaten a hasty meal, put on his dress coat and white tie in
haste, got into his carriage in haste, hurriedly accompanied his wife,
left her in order to take a doze on an armchair during the height of the
ball, woke in haste, returned home in haste, slept hurriedly, rose the
same, dragging this indefatigable creature about with him like a
convict's chain, she smiled at others, enticed others, waltzed with
others, adorned herself for others, keeping for him only her weariness,
her yawns, her pallor and her sick-headaches.

For these two galley-slaves of _chic_, the winter passed in this manner,
as fatiguing as months of penal servitude, and they went none too soon,
when the summer arrived, to breathe the sea air or enjoy the sunshine of
the country, in order to restore their frames, wan, worn-out, seedy and
"gruelled," as Sabine Marsy said, when she recalled her connection with
the artists.

"Ah! how much better I like my home!" thought Madame Vaudrey.

Sabine and Madame Gerson, with the wives of the ministers, those of the
chiefs of departments, and the regular visitors, were the most assiduous
in their attentions to Adrienne, whom they considered decidedly
provincial. She, stupefied, was alarmed by these Parisian bustlers, that
resembled machines in running order, jabbering away as music-boxes play.

"Do they tire you?" said Guy de Lissac to her bluntly one evening,
succumbing to a feeling of pity for this pensive young woman,--who was a
hundred times prettier than Madame Gerson, whose beauty was so highly
extolled in the journals,--this minister's wife, who voluntarily kept
herself in the background with a timidity that betrayed no awkwardness,
but was in every way attractive, especially to a man about town like
Guy.

"They do not tire me, they upset me," Adrienne replied.

"Ah! they are in full _go_, as it is called. An express train. But they
amuse themselves so much that they have not even time to smile. When the
locomotive spins along too rapidly, try to distinguish the scenery!"

Adrienne instinctively felt that und