Ah, to the end a woman loves to celebrate her conquest! It is the last touch of misfortune with her to lose in the old, the ugly, and the commonplace her youthful lord and master. If one could look under the gray hairs and wrinkles with which time thatches old women, one would be surprised to see the flutterings, the quiverings, the thrills, the emotions, the coals of the heart-fires which death alone extinguishes, when he commands the tenant to vacate.
Honorine's hands chilled with the ice of sixteen as she approached scissors to the white mustache and beard. When her finger-tips brushed those lips, still well formed and roseate, she felt it, strange to say, on her lips. When she asperged the warm water with cologne,—it was her secret delight and greatest effort of economy to buy this cologne,—she always had one little moment of what she called faintness—that faintness which had veiled her eyes, and chained her hands, and stilled her throbbing bosom, when as a bride she came from the church with him. It was then she noticed the faint fragrance of the cologne bath. Her lips would open as they did then, and she would stand for a moment and think thoughts to which, it must be confessed, she looked forward from month to month. What a man he had been! In truth he belonged to a period that would accept nothing less from Nature than physical beauty; and Nature is ever subservient to the period. If it is to-day all small men, and to-morrow gnomes and dwarfs, we may know that the period is demanding them from Nature.
When the General had completed—let it be called no less than the ceremony of—his toilet, he took his chocolate and his pain de Paris. Honorine could not imagine him breakfasting on anything but pain de Paris. Then he sat himself in his large arm-chair before his escritoire, and began transacting his affairs with the usual—
"But where is that idiot, that dolt, that sluggard, that snail, with my mail?" Honorine, busy in the breakfast-room:
"In a moment, husband. In a moment."
"But he should be here now. It is the first of the month, it is nine o'clock, I am ready; he should be here."
"It is not yet nine o'clock, husband."
"Not yet nine! Not yet nine! Am I not up? Am I not dressed? Have I not breakfasted before nine?"
"That is so, husband. That is so." Honorine's voice, prompt in cheerful acquiescence, came from the next room, where she was washing his cup, saucer, and spoon.
"It is getting worse and worse every day. I tell you, Honorine, Pompey must be discharged. He is worthless. He is trifling. Discharge him! Discharge him! Do not have him about! Chase him out of the yard! Chase him as soon as he makes his appearance! Do you hear, Honorine?"