I had been going happily along, thinking that I could enjoy this adventurous life of my new friends without being involved in it, when I found out that I was much less free than I thought. Your mother did not approve, I knew, and I gathered that she blamed you for leading me astray, but it came nevertheless as a surprise when she gently interfered.
“Aren’t you making yourself a little notorious, my child?” she asked one day.
“Notorious belle-mère?”
“Yes. Dining in restaurants in the company of such strange men.”
“They are not very strange, dear, except in being so very intelligent, and I never, at least scarcely ever, dine alone with men. There is almost always Clémentine.”
“I know, that’s just it. For a chaperone, you couldn’t have chosen worse.”
“But surely, Belle Mère, I need no chaperone, I am old enough to go about alone?”
She closed her eyes wearily, opened them and spoke sharply.
“French women of good family never go about alone, and never dine in public places.”