"What a bore!" muttered the young woman, moving uneasily on her chair; "it's that wretched Batonnin—the doll-faced man, as we used to call him at our parties."
"Don't you like him? Why, he used to go to your house——"
"Well! what does that prove? Do you imagine that, in society, we are fond of everybody we receive? On the contrary, three-quarters of the time the greatest pleasure we have is in passing all our guests in review and picking them to pieces."
"Ah! what a pitiful sort of pleasure! But whom can you share it with? for, if you speak ill of everybody——"
"You take a new-comer, and go and sit down with him in a corner of the salon; and there, on the pretext of telling him who people are, you give everybody a curry-combing. It's awfully amusing!"
"But the new-comer, if he isn't an idiot, must say to himself: 'As soon as I have gone, she'll say as much about me.'"
"Oh! we don't even wait till he's gone to do that."
Monsieur Batonnin, having paid his respects to Monsieur Gerbault and to the card-players, joined the two sisters.
"How are the charming widow and her lovely sister? The rose and the bud—or, rather, two buds—or two roses; for, both being flowers, and the flowers being sisters, and having thorns—why——"
"Come, Monsieur Batonnin, make up your mind. I want to know whether I am a rose or a bud," said Fanny, glancing at the guest with a mocking expression.