d Bergenheim as being 'proud as a peacock, as
stubborn as a mule, and as furious as a lion!' Ugly race! ugly race! What
I say to you now, Clemence, is to excuse your husband's faults, for it
would be time lost to try to correct them. However, all men are alike;
and since you are Madame de Bergenheim, you must accept your fate and
bear it as well as possible. And then, if you have your troubles, you
still have your good aunt to whom you can confide them and who will not
allow you to be tyrannized over. I will speak to your husband."

Clemence saw, from the first words of this tirade, that she must arm
herself with resignation; for anything which concerned the Bergenheims
aroused one of the hobbies which the old maid rode with a most complacent
spite; so she settled herself back in her chair like a person who would
at least be comfortable while she listened to a tiresome discourse, and
busied herself during this lecture caressing with the tip of a very
shapely foot the top of one of the andirons.

"But, aunt," said she at last, when the tirade was over, and she gave a
rather drawling expression to her voice, "I can not understand why you
have taken this idea into your head that Christian renders me unhappy. I
repeat it, it is impossible that one should be kinder to me than he, and,
on my side, I have the greatest respect and friendship for him."

"Very well, if he is such a pearl of husbands, if you live so much like
turtle-doves-and, to tell the truth, I do not believe a word of it--what
causes this ennui of which you complain and which has been perfectly
noticeable for some time? When I say ennui, it is more than that; it is
sadness, it is grief? You grow thinner every day; you are as pale as a
ghost; just at this moment, your complexion is gone; you will end by
being a regular fright. They say that it is the fashion to be pale
nowadays; a silly notion, indeed, but it will not last, for complexion
makes the woman."

The old lady said this like a person who had her reasons for not liking
pale complexions, and who gladly took pimples for roses.

Madame de Bergenheim bowed her head as if to acquiesce in this decision,
and then resumed in her drawling voice:

"I know that I am very unreasonable, and I am often vexed with myself for
having so little control over my feelings, but it is beyond my strength.
I have a tired sensation, a disgust for everything, something which I can
not overcome. It is an inexplicable physica