isdain.
Paul Vence surveyed the drawing-room.

"You have beautiful things, Madame. That would be nothing. But you have
only beautiful things, and all serve to set off your own beauty."

She did not conceal her pleasure at hearing him speak in that way. She
regarded Paul Vence as the only really intelligent man she knew. She had
appreciated him before his books had made him celebrated. His ill-health,
his dark humor, his assiduous labor, separated him from society. The
little bilious man was not very pleasing; yet he attracted her. She held
in high esteem his profound irony, his great pride, his talent ripened in
solitude, and she admired him, with reason, as an excellent writer, the
author of powerful essays on art and on life.

Little by little the room filled with a brilliant crowd. Within the large
circle of armchairs were Madame de Wesson, about whom people told
frightful stories, and who kept, after twenty years of half-smothered
scandal, the eyes of a child and cheeks of virginal smoothness; old
Madame de Morlaine, who shouted her witty phrases in piercing cries;
Madame Raymond, the wife of the Academician; Madame Garain, the wife of
the exminister; three other ladies; and, standing easily against the
mantelpiece, M. Berthier d'Eyzelles, editor of the 'Journal des Debats',
a deputy who caressed his white beard while Madame de Morlaine shouted at
him:

"Your article on bimetallism is a pearl, a jewel! Especially the end of
it."

Standing in the rear of the room, young clubmen, very grave, lisped among
themselves:

"What did he do to get the button from the Prince?"

"He, nothing. His wife, everything."

They had their own cynical philosophy. One of them had no faith in
promises of men.

"They are types that do not suit me. They wear their hearts on their
hands and on their mouths. You present yourself for admission to a club.
They say, 'I promise to give you a white ball. It will be an alabaster
ball--a snowball! They vote. It's a black ball. Life seems a vile affair
when I think of it."

"Then don't think of it."

Daniel Salomon, who had joined them, whispered in their ears spicy
stories in a lowered voice. And at every strange revelation concerning
Madame Raymond, or Madame Berthier, or Princess Seniavine, he added,
negligently:

"Everybody knows it."

Then, little by little, the crowd of visitors dispersed. Only Madame
Marmet and Paul Vence remained.

The latter went toward Madame Martin, and