Round the fireplace the women were listening to Mademoiselle de Songeon, who was describing the catacombs at Rome with the devotion of a catechumen. Madame Orlandi, artlessly devoid of morality and unskilled at suitable comparisons, said she preferred the ruins at Pompeii, because the pictures there were so diverting. Mesdames de Lavernay and d’Amberlard, mature and solemn women, had no opinion at all. Their aristocracy was very pleasing to Madame Dulaurens, who gladly advertised their origin. They were well-bred, and valued existence according to the number and the importance of the invitations that they managed to procure for themselves. Their husbands, a pair of practised parasites, had retained a distinguished air from the old royalist days. They had the right prejudices, were sincerely ignorant of modern life, and sought pleasure unceasingly. Baron d’Amberlard had high color and liked good living; the Marquis de Lavernay, still young in spite of his white hair, reserved his polite speeches concerning feminine beauty.
The latter had just come from the Court of Sessions and was giving a group of men his impressions of the jury.
“You condemn a thief and let a child-murderer go scot-free,” said M. Dulaurens. But the nervous little man hastened to add: “Please note that I am not criticising you.”
M. de Lavernay laughed unreservedly.
“Ah, my dear fellow, if we sentenced child-murderers we should never have any servants.”
“What a mania there is for having children!” cried M. d’Amberlard. “One’s family should be governed by the state of one’s finances. What do you think about it, M. Landeau?”
M. Landeau admitted that he had thought nothing about it. As a millionaire, he was always fighting terrible battles with labor so as to be able to pour a golden rain upon his wife and at last with a triumphant cheque to touch her proud heart. She played with him much in the same way a tamer does with the beast that roars, threatens, and arches its back. Under the pretext of filial duty towards Madame Orlandi (who did not care at all what she did) she had refused to follow him to Lyons; so twice a week he came to see her in the splendid villa he had built for her on the Cognin road. It was an overworked man with bent shoulders and pale face that she dragged with her into society. There, tamely growling, he admired Isabelle’s beauty and listened joylessly to her bell-like laughter, as she showed her white and shining teeth.
M. d’Amberlard, stifling a yawn, began to fidget.
“I’m afraid the dinner will be spoilt. It has been kept waiting too long,” he whispered to the Marquis de Lavernay, who made no answer but hastened to an empty seat beside Madame Landeau, where he was seen shaking his long horse-like head in his efforts to please.
Armand de Marthenay, motionless and silent up to now, overheard this and woke from the torpor into which he had sunk.