stairs with peals of merry laughter and singing snatches from
the last opera. In the spacious hall they played billiards and other
games, while one of the gentlemen performed on the large organ. There was
a strange mixture of freedom and strictness. The smoke of Russian
cigarettes mingled with the scent of opoponax. An elegant confusion which
ended about six o'clock in a general flight, when the sportsmen came
home, and the guests went to their rooms. An hour afterward all these
people met in the large drawing-room; the ladies in low-bodied evening
dresses; the gentlemen in dress-coats and white satin waistcoats, with a
sprig of mignonette and a white rose in their buttonholes. After dinner,
they danced in the drawing-rooms, where a mad waltz would even restore
energy to the gentlemen tired out by six hours spent in the field.

Madame Desvarennes did not join in that wild existence. She had remained
in Paris, attentive to business. On Saturdays she came down by the five
o'clock train and regularly returned on the Monday morning. Her presence
checked their wild gayety a little. Her black dress was like a blot among
the brocades and satins. Her severe gravity, that of a woman who pays and
sees the money going too fast, was like a reproach, silent but explicit,
to that gay and thoughtless throng of idlers, solely taken up by their
pleasure.

The servants made fun of her. One day the Prince's valet, who thought
himself a clever fellow, said before all the other servants that Mother
Damper had arrived. Of course they all roared with laughter and
exclaimed:

"Bother the old woman! Why does she come and worry us? She had far better
stop in the office and earn money; that's all she's good for!"

The disdain which the servants learned from their master grew rapidly. So
much so that one Monday morning, toward nine o'clock, Madame Desvarennes
came down to the courtyard, expecting to find the carriage which
generally took her to the station. It was the second coachman's duty to
drive her, and she did not see him. Thinking that he was a little late,
she walked to the stable-yard. There, instead of the victoria which
usually took her, she saw a large mail-coach to which two grooms were
harnessing the Prince's four bays. The head coachman, an Englishman,
dressed like a gentleman, with a stand-up collar, and a rose in his
buttonhole, stood watching the operations with an air of importance.

Madame Desvarennes went straight to him.