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