lot. There was a policeman in the procession.
There is one in almost all the bridal processions one sees in the park on
Saturdays. Don't they move you, my friend, all these poor, ridiculous,
miserable beings who contribute to the grandeur of the past?"

Among cups decorated with flowers she discovered a little knife, the
ivory handle of which represented a tall, thin woman with her hair
arranged a la Maintenon. She bought it for a few sous. It pleased her,
because she already had a fork like it. Le Menil confessed that he had no
taste for such things, but said that his aunt knew a great deal about
them. At Caen all the merchants knew her. She had restored and furnished
her house in proper style. This house was noted as early as 1690. In one
of its halls were white cases full of books. His aunt had wished to put
them in order. She had found frivolous books in them, ornamented with
engravings so unconventional that she had burned them.

"Is she silly, your aunt?" asked Therese.

For a long time his anecdotes about his aunt had made her impatient. Her
friend had in the country a mother, sisters, aunts, and numerous
relatives whom she did not know and who irritated her. He talked of them
with admiration. It annoyed her that he often visited them. When he came
back, she imagined that he carried with him the odor of things that had
been packed up for years. He was astonished, naively, and he suffered
from her antipathy to them.

He said nothing. The sight of a public-house, the panes of which were
flaming, recalled to him the poet Choulette, who passed for a drunkard.
He asked her if she still saw that Choulette, who called on her wearing a
mackintosh and a red muffler.

It annoyed her that he spoke like General Lariviere. She did not say that
she had not seen Choulette since autumn, and that he neglected her with
the capriciousness of a man not in society.

"He has wit," she said, "fantasy, and an original temperament. He pleases
me."

And as he reproached her for having an odd taste, she replied:

"I haven't a taste, I have tastes. You do not disapprove of them all, I
suppose."

He replied that he did not criticise her. He was only afraid that she
might do herself harm by receiving a Bohemian who was not welcome in
respectable houses.

She exclaimed:

"Not welcome in respectable houses--Choulette? Don't you know that he
goes every year for a month to the Marquise de Rieu? Yes, to the Marquise
de Rieu, the Cath