I confess that my heart beat fast in giving my name to the lackey commissioned to announce me. I had never seen Madame d’Ionis; she passed for one of the prettiest women in the country, was twenty-two, and had a husband who was neither handsome nor amiable, and who neglected her in order to travel. Her writing was charming, and she found means to show not only a great deal of sense, but still more cleverness in her business letters. Altogether she was a very fine character. This was all that I knew of her, and it was sufficient for me to dread appearing awkward or provincial. I grew pale on entering the salon. My first impression then was one of relief and pleasure, when I found myself in the presence of two stout and very ugly old women, one of whom, Madame the Dowager d’Ionis informed me that her daughter-in-law was at the house of her friends in the neighborhood, and probably would not return before the next day.
“You are welcome, all the same,” added this matron. “We have a very friendly and grateful feeling for your father, and it appears that we stand in great need of his counsel, which you are without doubt charged to communicate to us.”
“I came from him,” I replied, “to talk over the affair with Madame d’Ionis.”
“The Countess d’Ionis does in fact occupy herself with business affairs,” replied the dowager, rather coldly, as if to warn me that I had committed a blunder. “She understands it, she has a good head, and in the absence of my son, who is at Vienna, she is conducting this wearisome and interminable law suit. You must not depend upon me to replace her, for I understand nothing about it, and all that I can do is to retain you until the countess’ return, and offer you a supper, such as it may be, and a good bed.”
Hereupon the old lady, who in spite of the little lesson she had given me, appeared a good enough woman, rang and gave orders for making me at home. I refused to eat anything, having taken care to do so on the road, and knowing that nothing is more annoying than to eat alone, and under the eyes of people with whom one happens to be totally unacquainted.
As my father had allowed me several days in which to execute my commission, I had nothing better to do, than to wait the return of my beautiful client; and I was, in the eyes of herself and family, a messenger of sufficient importance to be entitled to a very cordial hospitality. I did not then await a second invitation to remain in her house, although there was a very comfortable inn where persons of my condition went ordinarily to await the moment of consultation with “people of quality.” Such was still the language of the provinces at this epoch, and it was necessary to appreciate these terms and their value, in order to maintain one’s position without degradation and without impertinence in one’s relations with the world. A bourgeois, and a philosopher (they did not yet say Democrat), I was not in the least convinced of the moral superiority of the nobility, and although they prided themselves upon being philosophical, I knew it was necessary to humor their susceptibilities of etiquette and respect them, in order to be respected oneself. I displayed then a slight timidity with an air of sufficiently good style, having already seen at my father’s house some specimens of all classes of society. The dowager appeared to perceive this, before the lapse of many minutes and no longer assumed an air of condescension in order to welcome, if not as an equal, at least as a friend the son of the family lawyer.
While she was conversing with me, as a woman with whom custom supplies the place of wit, I had the leisure to examine both her countenance and that of the other matron still stouter than she who, seated at some distance and filling in the background of a piece of tapestry, never opened her lips and scarcely raised her eyes in my direction. She was dressed somewhat in the style of the dowager, in a dark silk gown with tight sleeves, and a black lace scarf, surmounting a white cap, tied under her chin. But it was not so fresh or clean, her hands were less white, although equally plump, her type coarser, although coarseness was very evident in the heavy features of the stout dowager of Ionis. In short I was no longer in doubt as to her condition of companion, when the dowager remarked apropos of my refusal to sup.
“No matter, Zéphyrine, we must not forget that M. Nivières is young, and that he may be hungry yet before going to sleep. Order a light supper to be served in his apartment.”
The monumental Zéphyrine arose; she was as tall as she was stout. “And above all,” observed her mistress, “do not let them forget the bread.”
“The bread,” said Zéphyrine, in a fine, husky little voice that offered a pleasing contrast to her stature. Then she repeated, “The bread!” with an intonation strongly marked by doubt and surprise.