“The young lady in blue is her elder sister, is she not? She is not so good-looking.”
“Of course not; she is thinner!”
Trublot, who looked without seeing with his near-sighted eyes, had the broad shoulders of a solid male, obstinate in his tastes. He had come back from the kitchen perfectly satisfied, crunching little black things which Octave recognised with surprise to be coffee berries.
“I say,” asked he abruptly, “the women are plump in the South, are they not?”
Octave smiled, and at once became on an excellent footing with Trublot. They had many ideas in common which brought them closer together. They exchanged confidences on an out-of-the-way sofa; the one talked of his employer at “The Ladies’ Paradise,” Madame Hédouin, a confoundedly fine woman, but too cold; the other said that he had been put on to the correspondence, from nine to five, at his stockbroker’s, Monsieur Desmarquay, where there was a stunning maid servant. Just then the drawing-room door opened, and three persons entered.
“They are the Vabres,” murmured Trublot, bending over towards his new friend. “Auguste, the tall one, he who has a face like a sick sheep, is the landlord’s eldest son—thirty-three years old, ever suffering from headaches which make his eyes start from his head, and which, some years ago, prevented him from continuing to learn Latin; a sullen fellow who has gone in for trade. The other, Théophile, that abortion with carroty hair and thin beard, that little old-looking man of twenty-eight, ever shaking with fits of coughing and of rage, tried a dozen different trades, and then married the young woman who leads the way, Madame Valérie—”
“I have already seen her,” interrupted Octave. “She is the daughter of a haberdasher of the neighbourhood, is she not? But how those veils deceive one! I thought her pretty. She is only peculiar, with her shrivelled face and her leaden complexion.”
“She is another who is not my ideal,” sententiously resumed Trublot. “She has superb eyes, and that is enough for some men. But she’s a thin piece of goods.”
Madame Josserand had risen to shake Valérie’s hand.
“How is it,” cried she, “that Monsieur Vabre is not with you? and that neither Monsieur nor Madame Duveyrier have done us the honour of coming? They promised us though. Ah! it is very wrong of them!”