"I knew her husband," said the Colonel, "he often showed me her charming letters."
"Auguste," interrupted Hector Roquantin, "do introduce me to the Countess. They say you can do anything with her."
"When she returns to Paris at the end of autumn,..." murmured Saint-Clair, "I—I believe she does not entertain visitors in the country."
"Will you listen to me?" exclaimed Thémines.
Silence was restored. Saint-Clair figetted upon his chair like a prisoner before his judges.
"You did not know the Countess three years ago because you were then in Germany, Saint-Clair," went on Alphonse de Thémines, with aggravating coolness. "You cannot form any idea, therefore, of her as she was then; lovely, with the freshness of a rose, and as light-hearted and gay as a butterfly. Perhaps you do not know that among all her many admirers Massigny was the one she honoured with her favours? The most stupid and ridiculous of men turned the head of the most fascinating amongst women. Do you suppose that a deformed person could have done as much? Nonsense; believe me, with a good figure and a first-rate tailor, only boldness in addition is needed."
Saint-Clair was in a most awkward position. He longed to fling back the lie direct in the speaker's face, but was restrained from fear of compromising the Countess. He would have liked to have said something to defend her, but he was tongue-tied. His lips trembled with rage, and he tried to find some indirect means of forcing a quarrel, but could not.
"What," exclaimed Jules, with astonishment, "Madam de Coursy gave herself to Massigny? Frailty, thy name is woman!"
"The reputation of a woman being of such small moment, it is, of course, allowable to pull it to pieces for the sake of a little sport," observed Saint-Clair in a dry and scornful tone, "and—"
But as he spoke he remembered with dismay a certain Etruscan vase that he had noticed a hundred times upon the mantelpiece in the Countess's house in Paris. He knew that it was a gift from Massigny, who had brought it back with him from Italy; and—overwhelming coincidence!—it had been taken by the Countess from Paris to her country house. Every evening when Mathilde took the flowers out of her dress she put them in this Etruscan vase.