Entering the Beauvisage house we find a versatile, at the farther end of which rises the staircase. To right we enter a large salon with two windows opening on the square; to left is a handsome dining-room, looking on the street. The floor above is the one occupied by the family.
Notwithstanding the large fortune of the Beauvisage husband and wife, their establishment consisted of only a cook and a chamber-maid, the latter a peasant, who washed and ironed and frotted the floors rather than waited on her two mistresses, who were accustomed to spend their time in dressing and waiting upon each other. Since the sale of the business to Jean Violette, the horse and cabriolet used by Phileas, and kept at the Hotel de la Poste, had been relinquished and sold.
At the moment when Phileas reached his house after the Giguet meeting, his wife, already informed of the resolutions passed, had put on her boots and shawl and was preparing to go to her father; for she felt very sure that Madame Marion would, on that same evening, make her certain overtures relating to Simon and Cecile. After telling his wife of Charles Keller’s death, Phileas asked her opinion with an artless “What do you think of that, wife?” which fully pictured his habit of deferring to Severine’s opinion in all things. Then he sat down in an arm-chair and awaited her reply.
In 1839, Madame Beauvisage, then forty-four years old, was so well-preserved that she might, in that respect, rival Mademoiselle Mars. By calling to mind the most charming Celimene that the Theatre-Francais ever had, an excellent idea of Severine Grevin’s appearance will be obtained. The same richness of coloring, the same beauty of features, the same clearly defined outlines; but the hosier’s wife was short,—a circumstance which deprived her of that noble grace, that charming coquetry a la Sevigne, through which the great actress commends herself to the memory of men who saw both the Empire and the Restoration.
Provincial life and the rather careless style of dress into which, for the last ten years, Severine had allowed herself to fall, gave a somewhat common air to that noble profile and those beautiful features; increasing plumpness was destroying the outlines of a figure magnificently fine during the first twelve years of her married life. But Severine redeemed these growing imperfections with a sovereign, superb, imperious glance, and a certain haughty carriage of her head. Her hair, still black and thick and long, was raised high upon her head, giving her a youthful look. Her shoulders and bosom were snowy, but they now rose puffily in a manner to obstruct the free movement of the neck, which had grown too short. Her plump and dimpled arms ended in pretty little hands that were, alas, too fat. She was, in fact, so overdone with fulness of life and health that her flesh formed a little pad, as one might call it, above her shoes. Two ear-drops, worth about three-thousand francs each, adorned her ears. She wore a lace cap with pink ribbons, a mousseline-de-laine gown in pink and gray stripes with an edging of green, opened at the bottom to show a petticoat trimmed with valencienne lace; and a green cashmere shawl with palm-leaves, the point of which reached the ground as she walked.
“You are not so hungry,” she said, casting her eyes on Beauvisage, “that you can’t wait half an hour? My father has finished dinner and I couldn’t eat mine in peace without knowing what he thinks and whether we ought to go to Gondreville.”
“Go, go, my dear. I’ll wait,” said Phileas, using the “thee” and “thou.”
“Good heavens!” cried Severine with a significant gesture of her shoulders. “Shall I never break you of that habit of tutoying me?”
“I never do it before company—not since 1817,” said Phileas.
“You do it constantly before the servants and your daughter.”