Patiently waiting for him, she was beguiling the time by glancing through a law-treatise which she had found upon a table.
'You must be getting dreadfully hungry,' he said to her gaily as he entered the drawing-room. 'I've had a tremendous lot to do this morning.'
Then he gave her his arm and conducted her into the dining-room, an immense apartment where the little table, laid for two, near a window, seemed quite lost. A couple of tall footmen waited upon them. Rougon and Clorinde, who both preserved a very serious demeanour, ate rapidly. Their meal consisted of a few radishes, a slice of cold salmon, some cutlets with mashed potatoes, and a little cheese. They took no wine—Rougon drank nothing but water of a morning—and they scarcely exchanged a dozen words. Then, when the two footmen had cleared the table and brought in the coffee and liqueurs, Clorinde glanced at Rougon and gave a slight twitch of her eyebrows which he perfectly understood.
'That will do; you can go now,' he said to the footmen. 'I will ring if I require anything.'
The servants left the room, and Clorinde, rising from her chair, tapped her skirt to remove the crumbs which had fallen on it. She was wearing that day a black silk dress, somewhat too large for her and laden with flounces, a very elaborate dress which so enveloped her figure as to make her look like a mere bundle.
'What a tremendous place this is!' she remarked, going to the end of the room. 'It's the kind of place for a wedding feast, this dining-room of yours.' Then she came back and said: 'I should very much like to smoke a cigarette, do you know?'
'The deuce,' replied Rougon; 'there's no tobacco. I never smoke myself.'
But Clorinde winked and drew from her pocket a little tobacco pouch, of red silk, embroidered with gold, and scarcely larger than a purse. She rolled a cigarette with the tips of her tapering fingers, and then, as they did not wish to ring, they began to search the room for matches. At last they found three on a sideboard, and Clorinde carefully carried them off. With her cigarette between her lips, she sat back in her chair and began to sip her coffee, while gazing smilingly at Rougon.
'Well, I am entirely at your service now,' he remarked, with an answering smile. 'You want to talk to me; so let us talk.'
Clorinde made a gesture as though to express that what she had to say was of no consequence. 'Yes,' she rejoined; 'I have had a letter from my husband. He is feeling very bored at Turin. Of course, he is much pleased at having got this mission, thanks to you, but he doesn't want to be forgotten while he is away. However, we can talk of all that presently. There's no hurry about it.'