Madame de Gromance gave immediate proof of a tact for which Panneton was grateful. Without so much as a glance at the throne of Parma and Modena, and leaving on the right the Napoleonic swan’s neck, she sat on the flowered Beauvais sofa like a Parisienne. Clotilde had languished among the smaller landed gentry of the department and had had attentions paid to her by some rather under-bred young men; but the meaning of life was dawning upon her. She had racked her brains over money matters and was beginning to understand what social duty entailed. She did not dislike Panneton excessively. Partially bald, with very black hair brushed smoothly over his temples, and large prominent eyes, he looked like a lovesick apoplectic, and made her feel rather inclined to laugh, satisfying that craving for the comic element in love of which she had always been conscious. No doubt she would have preferred a magnificent young man, but she was inclined to facile gaiety and the sort of amusement which a man derives from jokes of a rather highly salted nature and a certain kind of ugliness. After a moment of very natural shyness she felt that it would not be so terrible, nor even very tedious.
Everything went well. The transit from the Beauvais to the settee and from the settee to the big sofa took place with all due decorum. They judged it needless to linger on the Oriental cushions and went straight into the Baudouin room.
When Clotilde thought of looking at it the room, like the erotic painter’s pictures, was strewn with women’s garments and fine linen.
“Ah, there are the Baudouins, you have two of them.”
“Just so.”
He had the Jardinier galant and the Carquois épuisé, two little water-colours for which he had paid 60,000 francs apiece at the Godard sale, and which cost him considerably more than that because of the use to which he put them. Calm once more, and a little melancholy even, he gazed with the eye of a connoisseur at the slender, graceful, supple figure of the woman before him, and, finding her beautiful, was conscious of a little feeling of pride, which grew as she gradually reassumed her social characteristics together with her garments.
She demanded the list of candidates.
“Panneton, manufacturer; Dieudonné de Gromance, landed proprietor; Dr. Fornerol; Mulot, explorer.”
“Young Mulot. He was running up bills in Paris, so his father sent him round the world. Désiré Mulot, explorer. That sounds well, an explorer candidate! The electors hope he will open up new fields for their goods. Above all, they feel flattered.”