"What an idiot he looks like!" exclaimed Joseph.
Agathe clasped her hands, and raised her eyes to heaven.
"What a state they have driven him to! Good God! can that be a man only fifty-seven years old?"
She looked attentively at her brother, and saw Flore Brazier standing directly behind him, with her hair dressed, a pair of snowy shoulders and a dazzling bosom showing through a gauze neckerchief, which was trimmed with lace; she was wearing a dress with a tight-fitting waist, made of grenadine (a silk material then much in fashion), with leg-of-mutton sleeves so-called, fastened at the wrists by handsome bracelets. A gold chain rippled over the crab-girl's bosom as she leaned forward to give Jean-Jacques his black silk cap lest he should take cold. The scene was evidently studied.
"Hey!" cried Joseph, "there's a fine woman, and a rare one! She is made, as they say, to paint. What flesh-tints! Oh, the lovely tones! what surface! what curves! Ah, those shoulders! She's a magnificent caryatide. What a model she would have been for one of Titians' Venuses!"
Adolphine and Madame Hochon thought he was talking Greek; but Agathe signed to them behind his back, as if to say that she was accustomed to such jargon.
"So you think a creature who is depriving you of your property handsome?" said Madame Hochon.
"That doesn't prevent her from being a splendid model!—just plump enough not to spoil the hips and the general contour—"
"My son, you are not in your studio," said Agathe. "Adolphine is here."
"Ah, true! I did wrong. But you must remember that ever since leaving
Paris I have seen nothing but ugly women—"