t astonished Claude the most was that he did
not recognise her, for she had become plump, round, and fair skinned,
instead of thin and sunburnt as he had known her. Her disturbing
ugliness had departed in a swelling of the face; her mouth, once
noted for its black voids, now displayed teeth which looked over-white
whenever she condescended to smile, with a disdainful curling of the
upper lip. You could guess that she had become immoderately respectable;
her five and forty summers gave her weight beside her husband, who was
younger than herself and seemed to be her nephew. The only thing of yore
that clung to her was a violent perfume; she drenched herself with the
strongest essences, as if she had been anxious to wash from her skin the
smell of all the aromatic simples with which she had been impregnated
by her herbalist business; however, the sharpness of rhubarb, the
bitterness of elder-seed, and the warmth of peppermint clung to her;
and as soon as she crossed the drawing-room, it was filled with an
undefinable smell like that of a chemist's shop, relieved by an acute
odour of musk.

Henriette, who had risen, made her sit down beside Christine, saying:

'You know each other, don't you? You have already met here.'

Mathilde gave but a cold glance at the modest attire of that woman
who had lived for a long time with a man, so it was said, before being
married to him. She herself was exceedingly rigid respecting such
matters since the tolerance prevailing in literary and artistic circles
had admitted her to a few drawing-rooms. Henriette hated her, however,
and after the customary exchange of courtesies, not to be dispensed
with, resumed her conversation with Christine.

Jory had shaken hands with Claude and Sandoz, and, standing near them,
in front of the fireplace, he apologised for an article slashing the
novelist's new book which had appeared that very morning in his review.

'As you know very well, my dear fellow, one is never the master in one's
own house. I ought to see to everything, but I have so little time! I
hadn't even read that article, I relied on what had been told me
about it. So you will understand how enraged I was when I read it this
afternoon. I am dreadfully grieved, dreadfully grieved--'

'Oh, let it be! It's the natural order of things,' replied Sandoz,
quietly. 'Now that my enemies are beginning to praise me, it's only
proper that my friends should attack me.'

The door again opened, and