day for the
purchasing is determined on and they go in a cab with a railing round
the top and drive to a large grocery store on the other side of the
river in the new sections of the town.

Madame Chantal and Mademoiselle Pearl make this trip together,
mysteriously, and only return at dinner time, tired out, although still
excited, and shaken up by the cab, the roof of which is covered with
bundles and bags, like an express wagon.

For the Chantals all that part of Paris situated on the other side of
the Seine constitutes the new quarter, a section inhabited by a strange,
noisy population, which cares little for honor, spends its days in
dissipation, its nights in revelry, and which throws money out of the
windows. From time to time, however, the young girls are taken to the
Opera-Comique or the Theatre Francais, when the play is recommended by
the paper which is read by M. Chantal.

At present the young ladies are respectively nineteen and seventeen.
They are two pretty girls, tall and fresh, very well brought up, in
fact, too well brought up, so much so that they pass by unperceived like
two pretty dolls. Never would the idea come to me to pay the slightest
attention or to pay court to one of the young Chantal ladies; they are
so immaculate that one hardly dares speak to them; one almost feels
indecent when bowing to them.

As for the father, he is a charming man, well educated, frank, cordial,
but he likes calm and quiet above all else, and has thus contributed
greatly to the mummifying of his family in order to live as he pleased
in stagnant quiescence. He reads a lot, loves to talk and is readily
affected. Lack of contact and of elbowing with the world has made his
moral skin very tender and sensitive. The slightest thing moves him,
excites him, and makes him suffer.

The Chantals have limited connections carefully chosen in the
neighborhood. They also exchange two or three yearly visits with
relatives who live in the distance.

As for me, I take dinner with them on the fifteenth of August and on
Twelfth Night. That is as much one of my duties as Easter communion is
for a Catholic.

On the fifteenth of August a few friends are invited, but on Twelfth
Night I am the only stranger.

Well, this year, as every former year, I went to the Chantals' for my
Epiphany dinner.

According to my usual custom, I kissed M. Chantal, Madame Chantal and
Mademoiselle Pearl, and I made a deep bow to the Misses Louise and