Her wretched clothes covered with mud, thick walking boots, and a round hat trimmed with a feather out of curl, were thrown beside her on a chair. All this I saw in an instant, for you may imagine how I fled. Etienne would have spoken to me—detained me; but with a gesture of horror at the clay-covered hands, I rushed off to mama, and reached her barely alive. You can imagine my appearance.
"Good heavens, dear child! what is the matter?"
I related to mama what I had seen, where this dreadful woman was, and in what costume. And I cried, and cried. My mother, much moved, tried to console me, explained to me that it must have been a model.
"What! but it is abominable; no one ever told me about that before I was married!"
Hereupon Etienne arrived, greatly distressed, and tried in his turn to make me understand that a model is not a woman like other women, and that besides sculptors cannot get on without them; but these reasons had no effect upon me, and I stoutly declared I would have nothing to do with a husband who spent his days tête-à-tête with young ladies in such a costume.
"Come, my dear Etienne," said poor mama, trying hard to arrange everything peaceably, "could you not out of respect for your wife's feelings, replace this creature by a dummy, a lay figure?"
My husband bit his moustaches furiously.