They passed into the dining-room. After they were seated, Musadieu resumed the discussion.
“For my part, I say that men should be thin, because they are formed for exercises that require address and agility, incompatible with corpulency. But the women's case is a little different. Don't you think so, Corbelle?”
Corbelle was perplexed, the Duchess being stout and his own wife more than slender. But the Baroness came to the rescue of her husband, and resolutely declared herself in favor of slimness. The year before that, she declared, she had been obliged to struggle with the beginning of embonpoint, over which she soon triumphed.
“Tell us how you did it,” demanded Madame de Guilleroy.
The Baroness explained the method employed by all the fashionable women of the day. One must never drink while eating; but an hour after the repast a cup of tea may be taken, boiling hot. This method succeeded with everyone. She cited astonishing cases of fat women who in three months had become more slender than the blade of a knife. The Duchess exclaimed in exasperation:
“Good gracious, how stupid to torture oneself like that! You like nothing any more—nothing—not even champagne. Bertin, as an artist, what do you think of this folly?”
“Mon Dieu, Madame, I am a painter and I simply arrange the drapery, so it is all the same to me. If I were a sculptor I might complain.”
“But as a man, which do you prefer?”
“I? Oh, a certain rounded slimness—what my cook calls a nice little corn-fed chicken. It is not fat, but plump and delicate.”
The comparison caused a laugh; but the incredulous Countess looked at her daughter and murmured: