"You are an exquisite woman! Your conduct is admirable!"
And every one present would acquiesce. It was in a drawing-room which might have been supposed to be the seat of the War Committee, where were young women, women on the further verge of youth, poetesses, princesses; through which passed generals, convalescent heroes, ministers, men of all shades of politics, literary celebrities, and the sad relics of before-the-war æstheticism. The secrets of military operations were known there, whether carried out or simply planned, the underside of diplomacy, future declarations of war, historic nights, scandals unknown to the public. News was handed about, discredited, misconstrued, torn to pieces. An apparition from another world, like Odette, felt herself facing all Europe in arms, or some world-congress; rising from the modest tomb in which she had been living she was dazzled, her head was turned with it all. She rose to return to her solitude.
On the staircase she met La Villaumer, his smile scornful at the thought of the foolishness which he was about to hear.
"What do they expect of me?" she asked. "Imagine, there are those up-stairs who were ready to swear that I, all by myself, directed the battle of the Somme!"
"Not at all," he replied. "It is simply that you are a very worthy woman; you honor the house."
"All very well! But they frighten me. They seem to be expecting something of me——"
"That you will do the house still greater honor! Receptions of this sort would fain be taken as pictures of the country, in the small."
"Tell me about yourself, La Villaumer; how much truth is there in what they tell me—that you are going to distribute all your property and live in a garret?"
"Oh, it is a naturally erroneous paraphrase of an expression of which, like you, like many others, I have often made use. I have said: 'I no longer count. None of us any longer counts.' Which means: 'Whatever our value may formerly have been, the common cause is too grand for us to indulge in the fatuity of putting a value upon ourselves. Whoever we may be, we are reduced to nothingness by something superior to ourselves.' It is a rather stern assertion, and just because it is so it sets imaginations to work. Our amiable gossips immediately translate it into a child's picture, impressive by its crude coloring, in which they see me shivering on a pallet."
"And the story of Mme. de Boulainvilliers?"