"You are no longer as slender as you used to be."
Roncherolle, beginning to be weary of these remarks, replied with his ironical air, pretending to laugh:
"Ha! ha! what do you expect, my dear friend? We aren't either of us what we were twenty years ago! You yourself haven't that wasp-like waist that called forth universal admiration, and those irreproachable teeth that drove all women to despair."
Madame de Grangeville flushed and bit her lips in anger. She tried, however, to maintain an affable manner as she said:
"Ah! so you find me changed? That is strange; there are people who declare that I am just the same."
"That is because those people haven't passed twelve years without seeing you. But we two old friends, old acquaintances, have not met to flatter each other. Bless me! we know each other too intimately and of too long date not to be frank between ourselves. Poor Lucienne! ha! ha!"
"Well, monsieur! what makes you laugh like that, pray?"
"Because I am thinking; I remember that you used to ride like an angel in the old days; and I myself was a very good horseman. We sat in our saddles, I like Baucher, you like a bareback rider at the Hippodrome. Well, just imagine us now if we should have to mount a horse!—Ha! ha! ha!"
Madame de Grangeville made an impatient gesture and turned her head away, saying to herself:
"Mon Dieu! what wretched ton he has now!"