nsual, arrogant, a Levantine trinket
brought to perfection.

But Jansoulet saw nothing of all that.

In his eyes she was then, she was always, down to the time of her
arrival in Paris, a superior being, a person of the highest refinement,
a Demoiselle Afchin; he spoke to her with respect, maintained a
slightly humble and timid attitude toward her, gave her money without
counting it, indulged her most extravagant caprices, her wildest whims,
all the strange conceits of a Levantine's brain distracted by ennui and
idleness. A single word justified everything; she was a Demoiselle
Afchin. And yet they had nothing in common; he was always at the Kasbah
or the Bardo, in attendance on the bey, paying his court to him, or
else in his counting-room; she passed her day in bed, on her head a
diadem of pearls worth three hundred thousand francs, which she never
laid aside, brutalizing herself by smoking, living as in a harem,
admiring herself in the mirror, arraying herself in fine clothes, in
company with several other Levantines, whose greatest joy consisted in
measuring with their necklaces the girth of arms and legs which
rivalled one another in corpulency, bringing forth children with whom
she never concerned herself, whom she never saw, who had never even
caused her suffering, for she was delivered under the influence of
chloroform. A "bale" of white flesh perfumed with musk. And Jansoulet
would say with pride: "I married a Demoiselle Afchin!"

Under Parisian skies and in the cold light of the capital, his
disillusionment began. Having determined to set up a regular
establishment, to receive, to give entertainments, the Nabob had sent
for his wife, in order to place her at the head of his house. But when
he saw that mass of stiff, crackling dry-goods, of Palais-Royal finery,
alight at his door, and all the extraordinary outfit that followed her,
he had a vague impression of a Queen Pomare in exile. The difficulty
was that he had seen some genuine women of fashion and he made
comparisons. He had planned a grand ball to celebrate her arrival, but
he prudently abstained. Indeed Madame Jansoulet refused to receive any
one. Her natural indolence was augmented by the homesickness which the
cold yellow fog and the pouring rain had brought upon her as soon as
she landed. She passed several days in bed, crying aloud like a child,
declaring that they had brought her to Paris to kill her, and even
rejecting the slightest attentions f