"Men are always like Horace," said the princess. "They admire rural life, but they remain for all that with Augustus."
I read the other day of some actresses dining off a truffled pheasant and a sack of bonbons. That is the sort of dinner we make all the year round, morally—metaphorically—how do you say it? It makes us thirsty, and perhaps—I am not sure—perhaps it leaves us half starved, though we nibble the sweetmeats, and don't know it.
"Your dinner must lack two things—bread and water."
"Yes; we never see either. It is all truffles and caramels and vins frappés."
"There is your bread."
She glanced at the little children, two pretty, graceful little maids of six and seven years old.
"Ouf!" said the Countess Branka. "They are only little bits of puff paste, a couple of petits fours baked on the boulevards. If they be chic, and marry well, I for one shall ask no more of them. If ever you have children, I suppose you will rear them on science and the Antonines?"
"Perhaps on the open air and Homer."