of 'really musical' people, it had lost its distinction and its
charm, and even those whose taste was frankly bad had ceased to find in
it more than a moderate pleasure to which they hardly liked to confess.
Mme. de Cambremer cast a furtive glance behind her. She knew that her
young daughter-in-law (full of respect for her new and noble family,
except in such matters as related to the intellect, upon which, having
'got as far' as Harmony and the Greek alphabet, she was specially
enlightened) despised Chopin, and fell quite ill when she heard him
played. But finding herself free from the scrutiny of this Wagnerian,
who was sitting, at some distance, in a group of her own contemporaries,
Mme. de Cambremer let herself drift upon a stream of exquisite memories
and sensations. The Princesse des Laumes was touched also. Though
without any natural gift for music, she had received, some fifteen
years earlier, the instruction which a music-mistress of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain, a woman of genius who had been, towards the end of
her life, reduced to penury, had started, at seventy, to give to the
daughters and granddaughters of her old pupils. This lady was now dead.
But her method, an echo of her charming touch, came to life now and
then in the fingers of her pupils, even of those who had been in other
respects quite mediocre, had given up music, and hardly ever opened a
piano. And so Mme. des Laumes could let her head sway to and fro, fully
aware of the cause, with a perfect appreciation of the manner in which
the pianist was rendering this Prelude, since she knew it by heart. The
closing notes of the phrase that he had begun sounded already on her
lips. And she murmured "How charming it is!" with a stress on the
opening consonants of the adjective, a token of her refinement by which
she felt her lips so romantically compressed, like the petals of a
beautiful, budding flower, that she instinctively brought her eyes into
harmony, illuminating them for a moment with a vague and sentimental
gaze. Meanwhile Mme. de Gallardon had arrived at the point of saying to
herself how annoying it was that she had so few opportunities of meeting
the Princesse des Laumes, for she meant to teach her a lesson by not
acknowledging her bow. She did not know that her cousin was in the room.
A movement of Mme. Franquetot's head disclosed the Princess. At once
Mme. de Gallardon dashed towards her, upsetting all her neighbours;
although determined to p