mptoms of haughty jealousy among
her country neighbors, always ready to feel themselves insulted and very
little qualified to make themselves agreeable in society. So she resolved
to extend a general invitation to all those whom she felt obliged to
receive, in order to relieve herself at once of a nuisance for which no
pleasure could prove an equivalent. This day was one of her duty days.

Among these ladies, much more gorgeously than elegantly attired, these
healthy young girls with large arms, and feet shaped like flat-irons,
ponderous gentlemen strangled by their white cravats and puffed up in
their frock-coats, Gerfaut, whose nervous system had been singularly
irritated by his disappointment of the night before, felt ready to burst
with rage. He was seated at the table between two ladies, who seemed to
have exhausted, in their toilettes, every color in the solar spectrum,
and whose coquettish instincts were aroused by the proximity of a
celebrated writer. But their simperings were all lost; the one for whom
they were intended bore himself in a sulky way, which fortunately passed
for romantic melancholy; this rendered him still more interesting in the
eyes of his neighbor on the left, a plump blonde about twenty-five years
old, fresh and dimpled, who doted upon Lord Byron, a common pretension
among pretty, buxom women who adore false sentimentality.

With the exception of a bow when he entered the drawing-room, Octave had
not shown Madame de Bergenheim any attention. The cold, disdainful, bored
manner in which he patiently endured the pleasures of the day exceeded
even the privilege for boorish bearing willingly granted to gentlemen of
unquestionable talent. Clemence, on the contrary, seemed to increase in
amiability and liveliness. There was not one of her tiresome guests to
whom she did not address some pleasant remark, not one of those vulgar,
pretentious women to whom she was not gracious and attentive; one would
have said that she had a particular desire to be more attractive than
usual, and that her lover's sombre air added materially to her good
humor.

After dinner they retired to the drawing-room where coffee was served. A
sudden shower, whose drops pattered loudly against the windows, rendered
impossible all plans for amusement out of doors. Gerfaut soon noticed a
rather animated conversation taking place between Madame de Bergenheim,
who was somewhat embarrassed as to how to amuse her guests for the
rema