It would be wearisome to describe the long series of moves and machinations, the whole comedy of affectation and pretended solicitude which Mme. de la Vaudraye employed to induce Gilberte to come and see her. One day, at last, Gilberte promised, on the understanding that there would be no one there but the regular visitors to the house.
And, in the evening, Adèle, carrying a lantern and muttering between her teeth, accompanied her through the deserted streets.
It was a very modest house that was occupied by her who remained the first lady of Domfront despite her shattered fortunes. No show, no comfort, hardly room for the mother and son; but there was a salon, a sumptuous salon, a salon, to which everything had been sacrificed, a salon that enabled Mme. de la Vaudraye to declare, with pride:
“I have a salon.”
And the townspeople nodded their heads in chorus:
“Mme. de la Vaudraye has a salon.”
In so saying, they had in mind not only the costly furniture heaped up in that one room, but also the shining lights of the town who adorned it with their presence. You were really nobody at Domfront if you did not form part of the salon of Mme. de la Vaudraye.
In its essence and as Gilberte saw it, the salon consisted of an old-oak chest and an Empire sideboard, of the Bottentuit and Charmeron couples and their five young ladies, of M. and Mme. Lartiste and their son, of Mlle. du Bocage, of M. Beaufrelant, M. Hourteulx and Messrs. Simare, father and son, of a Louis XV clock, of a lacquered glass-case, and of a set of chairs and armchairs upholstered in crimson silk.
A great silence, composed of eager curiosity, admiration and envy, greeted Gilberte’s entrance. The hostess at once made the introductions, or rather chiselled them out in elaborate phrases. Gilberte bowed.
“And my son? Where is my dear Guillaume?”