There was a tap at the door.
"It's only me!" exclaimed a woman's voice in the passage.
Félicie, slipping on her pink petticoat, begged the doctor to open the door.
Enter Madame Doulce, a lady who was allowing her massive person to run to seed, although she had long contrived to hold it together on the boards, compelling it to assume the dignity proper to aristocratic mothers.
"Well, my dear! How-d'ye-do, doctor! Félicie, you know I am not one to pay compliments. Nevertheless, I saw you the day before yesterday, and I assure you that in the second of La Mère confidente you put in some excellent touches, which are far from easy to bring off."
Nanteuil, with smiling eyes, waited—as is always the case when one has received a compliment—for another.
Madame Doulce, thus invited by Nanteuil's silence, murmured some additional words of praise:
"...excellent touches, genuinely individual business!"
"You really think so, Madame Doulce? Glad to hear it, for I don't feel the part. And then that great Perrin woman upsets me altogether. It is a fact. When I sit on the creature's knees, it makes me feel as if——You don't know all the horrors that she whispers into my ear while we are on the stage! She's crazy! I understand everything, but there are some things which disgust me. Michon, don't my stays crease at the back, on the right?"
"My dear child," cried Trublet with enthusiasm, "you have just said something that is really admirable."