“A woman of the world, a very decent girl. She won’t eat you.”
It was a little maid, with a rosy complexion, who opened the door to them. She took the gentlemen’s coats with familiar and and tender smiles. For a moment, Trublot kept her in a corner of the ante-room, whispering things in her ear which almost made her choke, as though being tickled. But Bachelard had pushed open the drawing-room door, and he at once introduced Monsieur Josserand. The latter stood for a moment embarrassed, finding Clarisse ugly, and not understanding how the counselor could prefer this sort of creature—black and skinny, and with a head of hair like a poodle—to his wife, one of the most beautiful women of society. Clarisse, however, was charming. She had preserved the Parisian cackle, a superficial and borrowed wit, an itch of drollery caught by rubbing up against men, but was able to put on a grand lady sort of air when she chose.
“Sir, I am charmed. All Alphonse’s friends are mine. Now you are one of us, the house is yours.”
Duveyrier, warned by a note from Bachelard, also greeted Monsieur Josserand very amiably. Octave was surprised at the counselor’s youthful appearance. He was no longer the severe and ill-at-ease individual, who never seemed to be in his own home in the drawing-room of the Rue de Choiseul. The deep red blotches on his face were turning to a rosy hue, his oblique eyes shone with a childish delight, whilst Clarisse related in the midst of a group how he sometimes hastened to come and see her during a short adjournment of the court—just time to jump into a cab, to kiss her, and start back again. Then he complained of being overworked. Four sittings a week, from eleven to five; always the same skein of bickerings to unravel, it ended by destroying all feeling in one’s heart.
“It is true,” said he, laughing, “one requires a few roses amongst all that. I feel better afterward.”
However, he did not wear his bit of red ribbon, but always took it off when visiting his mistress; a last scruple, a delicate distinction, which his sense of decency obstinately persisted in. Clarisse, without wishing to say so, felt very much hurt at it.
Octave, who had at once shook hands with the young woman like a comrade, listened and looked about him. Clarisse never received other women, out of decency, she said. When her acquaintances complained that her drawing-room was in want of a few ladies, she would answer with a laugh:
“Well! and I—am I not enough?”
She had arranged a decent home for Alphonse, very middle-class in the main, having a mania for what was proper all through the ups and downs of her existence. When she received she would not be addressed familiarly.
The little maid handed round some glasses of punch, with her agreeable air. Octave took one, and, leaning toward his friend, whispered in his ear: