“What envious rage at the Laita or the Planta when, for example, they read:
“‘Prince and Princess of Anhalt and their suite, ... Alpes Dauphinoises.’
“Everything becomes colorless in the light of that crushing line. What response can there be? They rack their brains; they try their wits; if you are possessed of a de or some title, they drag it out and flaunt it. Why, here’s La Chevrette has been serving us up the very same Inspector of Forests three times under as many different species, as Inspector, as Marquis, and as Chevalier of Saints Maurice and Lazarus; but the Alpes Dauphinoises is still wearing the cockade, though you may be sure it is not on our account. Great heavens! You know how retiring mamma always is, and afraid of her shadow; well, she took good care to forbid Fanny saying who we were, because the position of papa and that of your husband might have drawn about us too much idle curiosity and social riffraff. The newspaper said merely Mesdames Le Quesnoy de Paris, ... Alpes Dauphinoises; and as Parisians are few and far between our incognito has not been unveiled.
“We are very simply arranged, but comfortably enough—two rooms on the second floor, the whole valley lying before us, an amphitheatre of mountains black with pine woods far below—mountains which show various shades and get lighter and lighter as they rise with their streaks of eternal snow; barren steeps close upon little farms which look like squares in green and yellow and rose, among which the haycocks look no larger than bee-hives.
“But this beautiful landscape does little to keep us in our rooms. In the evening there is the drawing-room, in the day time we wander through the park to carry out the treatment. In connection with an existence so full and yet so empty, the treatment takes hold of and absorbs you. The amusing hour is the one after breakfast, when groups are formed about the little tables for coffee under the big lime-tree at the entrance of the garden; this is the hour for arrivals and departures. People exchange good-byes and shake hands about the carriage which is taking off the bathers; the hotel people press forward, their eyes brilliant with that shiny look, that famous sheen of the Savoyard; we kiss people whom we hardly know; handkerchiefs are waved; the horse-bells jangle, and then the heavy and crowded wagon disappears, swaying along the narrow road on the side of the hill, carrying off with it those names and faces which for a moment have made a part of our life in common, those faces unknown yesterday and to-morrow forgot.
“Others come and install themselves after their own fashion. I imagine that this is like the monotony of packet-ships, with the change of faces at every port. All this going and coming amuses me, but poor dear mamma continues to be very sorrowful, very much absorbed, in spite of the smile which she tries to give when I look at her. I can guess that every detail of our lives brings with it for her a heartrending souvenir, a memory of the gloomiest images. Poor thing, she saw so many of those caravansaries of sick people during that year when she followed her poor dying boy from stage to stage, in the lowlands or on the mountains, beneath the pines or at the edge of the sea, with hope always deceived and that eternal resignation which she was ever obliged to show during her martyrdom.
“I do think that Jarras might have arranged to save her from the memory of this sorrow; for as for me, I am not sick, I cough hardly at all, and with the exception of my disgusting huskiness, which leaves me with a voice fit for crying vegetables in the street, I have never been so well in my life. A real devilish appetite, would you believe it? fits of hunger so terrible that I can hardly wait for a meal! Yesterday, after a breakfast with thirty dishes, with a menu more involved than the Chinese alphabet, I saw a woman stemming raspberries before our door. All of a sudden a desire seized me; two bowls full, my dear girl, two bowls full of the great big fresh raspberries, ‘the fruit of the country,’ as our waiter calls them, and there you have my appetite!
“All the same, my dear, how lucky it is that neither you nor I have taken the malady of that poor brother of ours, whom I hardly knew and whose discouraged expression, which is shown on his portrait in our parents’ chamber, comes back to me here, when I see other faces with their drawn features! And what an odd fish is this doctor who formerly took care of him, this famous Bouchereau! The other day mamma wanted to present me to him; in order to obtain a consultation with him we prowled around the park in the neighborhood of the old, long-legged fellow with his brutal and harsh face. But he was very much surrounded by the Arvillard doctors, who were listening to him with all the humbleness of pupils. Then we waited for him at the close of the inhalation; all our labor in vain! The fellow set off walking at such a pace that it seemed as if he wished to avoid us. You know with mamma one does not get over ground fast; so we missed him again this time. Finally, yesterday morning, Fanny went on our part to ask of his housekeeper if he could receive us; he sent back word that he was at the baths to care for his own health and not to give medical advice! There’s a boor for you! It is quite true that I have never seen such a pallor as he presents; it is like wax; papa is a highly-colored gentleman by the side of him. He lives only upon milk, never comes down to the dining-room and still less to the drawing-room. Our little nervous doctor, the one whom I call M. That’s-what-you-need, will have it that he is the victim of a very dangerous heart malady and it is only the waters of Arvillard which have for the past three years permitted him to stay alive.
“‘That’s what you need! That’s what you need!’
“That is all that one can make out in the babble of this funny little man, as vain as he is garrulous, who whirls round our apartments every morning.