Everything in Madame Magnac's house was uncompromisingly perfect. Her unpretending name, the mystery with which she surrounded herself, the letters of reproof which she wrote to those papers who, forgetful of her instructions, had printed the names of her guests amongst their society news, all the roaring mechanism of a queen's incognito, enabled her to pass very far from unnoticed.
Following an unhappy marriage, Madame Magnac had sacrificed herself on the altars of friendship, offering herself without reserve on their cold marble. People collected at her house every evening at six o'clock (she made a point of being at home) for a minute criticism of the contemporary situation and an analysis of the contradictions of the human heart. She always received the same friends, with the air of owing her life to each of them, which they all appreciated extremely, particularly the old ones. She only gave up seeing them when they made "foolish marriages," that is to say, married girls whom she considered too young.
There were several lamps on the ground like Davy lamps waiting for their owners, and the uncertain light from these shone up the walls purposely denuded of all decoration.
Her drawing-room had nothing of the obvious and geometric flashiness of a shop, but resembled rather the austere anonymity of the palaces of the great antique dealers through which a noble being with exquisite Levite hands leads one to a shrine hung with grey moiré silk, in which lies, the victim of an overwhelmingly perfect choice, a fourth century effigy of Buddha.
Lewis entered heavily and sat on the floor without any greeting, stretching his big steaming boots to the fire, with his dog, which diffused a loathsome smell, between his knees. With an excess of affectation he liked being untidy in elegant surroundings because it was not displeasing to him to give an impression of strength and bad breeding. Thus it was that he readily dined in a lounge suit in the midst of ladies in evening dress; and he was always asking for out of the way things that disorganized the service at meals.
Not far from him, unconsciously seated above the radiator from which the warm air rose, blowing out the legs of his trousers, was the Prince de Waldeck. The Prince de Waldeck was what Pierre de Coulevain would describe as "Old France"; his face was wrinkled like the sole of a foot, and he wore a Lavallière tie, button boots and a coat of a "Club Agricole" cut; he never shook hands with anyone, and beneath a blustering demeanour concealed a heart of gold. With a certain bitter charm he could talk amusingly about anything because of his warped sense of humour. He was one of the last of the idlers, and belonged to a past generation: in the morning he fenced, in the afternoon he hunted about for seventeenth-century first editions and fortune tellers; he was the only man who still went to tea parties; in the evening he always dressed, even when dining by himself. One of his affectations was never to tell his age. When anyone asked him he answered "—ty-eight," smothering the first part of the number. He was known as Tyate. Not a day passed without his making a pun. He used to act as judge in the jumping at the Horse Show. He occasionally went to theatres but never to music halls or cinemas. In fact he represented a complete period.
At the moment of Lewis's entry the Prince had just told how Madame Briffault, whom he had consulted that afternoon, had foretold that the greater part of his fortune "which he had hidden away in England" (as indeed he had) would soon be lost.
"It's the fault of the financial 'International,' isn't it?" he asked, turning to an ex-Prime Minister for the time being unemployed, who blushed; he took any remark directly addressed to himself as a challenge, and kept himself modestly in a corner like a spittoon.
"You see, Anglophile," he went on, addressing Lewis, "your beastly pound sterling...," to the great annoyance of Captain Montgiscard, himself an obsolete type of naval officer and art connoisseur, who was waiting to be asked to play Delage's Hindu Love Songs on the piano, and who was running his bejewelled fingers through a tactile beard which was like that of a deep-sea fish.
"My dear old Tyate," answered Lewis, "that is of no interest at all. What is amusing is to do business. Whether it is in shells or English bank-notes, or depreciated stock, it is all the same. One is put into this world to gamble."