“Yes, go; and I will write you a note in the course of an hour, as if I had not seen you, asking you to get me a permit for to-morrow’s session, which I am told will be very interesting.”
“To be reduced to conspiracy!” cried Madame de l’Estorade, kissing her friend.
“My dear love,” said Madame de Camps, “they say the life of a Christian is a struggle, but that of a woman married in a certain way is a pitched battle. Have patience and courage.”
So saying, the two friends separated.
The next day, about two o’clock, Madame de l’Estorade, accompanied by her husband and Madame Octave de Camps, took their places in the gallery reserved for the members of the peerage. She seemed ill, and answered languidly the bows and salutations that were addressed to her from all parts of the Chamber. Madame de Camps, who was present for the first time in the parliamentary precincts, made two observations: first, she objected strongly to the slovenly costume of a great many of the “honorable gentlemen”; and she was also amazed at the number of bald heads she looked down upon from the gallery. Monsieur de l’Estorade took pains to point out to her all the notabilities present: first, the great men whom we need not mention, because their names are in everybody’s memory; next, the poet Canalis, whose air she thought Olympian; d’Arthez, who pleased her by his modesty and absence of assumption; Vinet, of whom she remarked that he was like a viper in spectacles; Victorin Hulot, a noted orator of the Left Centre. It was some time before she could accustom herself to the hum of the various conversations, which seemed to her like the buzzing of bees around their hive; but the thing that most amazed her was the general aspect of this assemblage of legislators, where a singular laisser-aller and a total absence of dignity would never have led her to suppose she was in the hall of the representatives of a great people.
It was written that on this day no pain or unpleasantness should be spared to Madame de l’Estorade. Just before the sitting began, the Marquise d’Espard, accompanied by Monsieur de Ronquerolles, entered the peers’ gallery and took her seat beside the countess. Though meeting constantly in society, the two women could not endure each other. Madame de l’Estorade despised the spirit of intrigue, the total lack of principle, and the sour, malevolent nature which the marquise covered with an elegant exterior; and the marquise despised, to a still greater degree, what she called the pot-au-feu virtues of Madame de l’Estorade. It must also be mentioned that Madame de l’Estorade was thirty-two years old and her beauty was still undimmed, whereas Madame d’Espard was forty-four, and, in spite of the careful dissimulations of the toilet, her beauty was fairly at an end.
“You do not often come here, I think,” said Madame d’Espard, after the usual conventional phrases about the pleasure of their meeting had passed.
“I never come,” replied Madame de l’Estorade.
“And I am most assiduous,” said Madame d’Espard.
Then, pretending to a sudden recollection, she added,—