“Well! yes,” continued Madame Duveyrier, “I am satisfied with Clémenee, she is a very clean and very active girl.”
“And your Hippolyte,” asked Madamo Josserand, “had you not the intention of discharging him?”
Just then, Hippolyte, the footman, was handing round some ices. When he had withdrawn, tall, strong, and with a florid complexion, Clotilde answered in an embarrassed way:
“We have decided to keep him. It is so unpleasant changing! You know, servants get used to one another, and I should not like to part with Clémence.”
Madame Josserand hastened to agree with her, feeling that they were on delicate ground. There was some hope of marrying the two together, some day; and the Abbé Mauduit, whom the Duveyriers’ had consulted in the matter, slowly wagged his head, as though to dissemble a state of affairs known to all the house, but of which no one ever spoke. All the ladies now opened their hearts: Valérie had sent another servant about her business that very morning, and that made three in a week; Madamo Juzeur had decided to take a young girl of fifteen from the foundling hospital so as to teach her herself; as for Madame Josserand, her complaints of Adèle seemed never likely to cease, a slut, a good-for-nothing, whose goings-on were most extraordinary. And they all, feeling languid in the blaze of the candles and the perfume of the flowers, sank deeper into these ante-room stories, wading through greasy account-books, and taking a delight in relating the insolence of a coachman or of a scullery-maid.
“Have you seen Julie?” abruptly asked Trublot of Octave, in a mysterious tone of voice.
And, as the other looked at him in amazement, he added:
“My dear fellow, she is stunning. Go and see her. Just pretend you want to go somewhere, and then slip into the kitchen. She is stunning!”
He was speaking of the Duveyriers’ cook. The ladies’ conversation was taking a turn: Madame Josserand was describing, with overflowing admiration, a very modest estate which the Duveyriers had near Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, and which she had merely caught a glimpse of from the train, one day when she was going to Fontainebleau. But Clotilde did not like the country, she lived there as little as possible, merely during the holidays of her son, Gustave, who was then studying rhetoric at the Lycée Bonaparte.
“Caroline is right in not wishing to have any children,” declared she, turning towards Madame Hédouin, seated two chairs away from her. “The little things interfere with all your habits!”