The woman asked:
“Can you tell me, monsieur, where we are? My fool of a husband made us lose our way, although he pretended he knew the country perfectly.”
I replied confidently:
“Madame, you are going towards Saint-Cloud and turning your back on Versailles.”
With a look of annoyed pity for her husband, she exclaimed:
“What, we are turning our back on Versailles? Why, that is just where we want to dine!”
“I am going there also, madame.”
“Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!” she repeated, shrugging her shoulders, and in that tone of sovereign contempt assumed by women to express their exasperation.
She was quite young, pretty, a brunette with a slight shadow on her upper lip.
As for him, he was perspiring and wiping his forehead. It was assuredly a little Parisian bourgeois couple. The man seemed cast down, exhausted and distressed.