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c discussions and ideas, expressed in their baldest form, were confounded in vague eddies of glowing vapor which invariably gave her the sick headache. The _blague_ was especially terrifying to her. Being a foreigner, a former divinity of the ballet greenroom, fed upon superannuated compliments, gallantries _a la Dorat_ she was unable to understand it, and was dismayed at the wild exaggerations, the paradoxes of those Parisians whose wits were sharpened by the liberty of the studio. She whose wit had consisted entirely in the agility of her feet was awed by her new surroundings and relegated to the position of a simple companion; and to see that amiable old creature, silent and smiling, sitting in the bright light of the rounded window, her knitting on her knees, like one of Chardin's bourgeoises, or walking quickly up the long Rue de Chaillot where the nearest market was situated, with her cook at her side, one would never have dreamed that the worthy woman had once held kings, princes, all the susceptible portion of the nobility and the world of finance, subject to the whim of her toes and her gauze skirts. Paris is full of these extinct stars which have fallen back into the crowd. Some of these celebrities, these conquerors of a former time, retain a gnawing rage in their hearts; others, on the contrary, dwell blissfully upon the past, ruminate in ineffable content all their glorious, bygone joys, seeking only repose, silence and obscurity, wherein they may remember and meditate, so that, when they die, we are amazed to learn that they were still living. Constance Crenmitz was one of those happy mortals. But what a strange artists' household was that of those two women, equally childlike, contributing to the common stock inexperience and ambition, the tranquillity of an accomplished destiny and the feverish activity of a life in its prime, all the differences indeed that were indicated by the contrast between that blonde, white as a withered rose, who seemed to be dressed, beneath her fair complexion, in a remnant of Bengal fire, and that brunette, with the regular features, who almost invariably enveloped her beauty in dark stuffs, simply made, as if with a semblance of masculinity. Unforeseen emergencies, caprice, ignorance of even the most trivial things, led to extreme confusion in the management of the household, from which they were sometimes unable to extricate themselves except by enforced privati
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