“But then it will be dowdy and old-fashioned,” demurred the Englishwoman.
“Then let madame sacrifice le peigne à galerie! What sacrifice is it, after all? Nobody wears them now; they belong to a past age,” argued Madame Alexandrine, appealing to me.
“This one was a present from my husband,” replied Mrs. Clifford, in a tone that seemed to say: “You understand, there is nothing more to be said.”
I did not dare look at Berthe. Luckily she was beside me, so I could not see her face, but I saw the muff go up in a very expressive way, and she suddenly disappeared into a little salon to the left, set apart for caps and coiffures de bal. I heard a smothered “burst,” and a treacherous armoire à glace revealed her thrown back in an arm-chair, stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth, and convulsed with laughter.
Madame Folibel, whose risible faculties long and hard training had brought under perfect control, received the communication, however, with unruffled equanimity.
“That explains why madame holds to it,” she answered very seriously; “it is natural and affecting. Still, one must be reasonable; one must not sacrifice too much to a sentiment. Monsieur would not wish it,” turning to the gentleman, who stood with his back to the fireplace listening in solemn silence to the controversy. “Monsieur understands that the chief point in madame’s toilette is her bonnet. I grieve to say English ladies themselves do not sufficiently realize the supremacy of the bonnet; yet a moment’s reflection ought to show them how all-important it is, how necessary that every other feature in the dress should succumb to it. The complexion, the hair, the shape of the head, are all at the mercy of the chapeau. Of what avail is a handsome dress, and fashionable shawl or mantle, costly fur, lace—an irreproachable tout-ensemble, in fine—if the bonnet be unbecoming? All these are but the rez-de-chaussée and the entresol, so to speak, while the chapeau is the crown of the edifice. Le chapeau enfin c’est la femme! [The bonnet, in fact, is the woman!]” At this climax Madame Folibel paused. Mr. Clifford, who had listened as solemn as a judge, his hands in his pockets, and not a muscle of his face moving, while the modiste, looking straight at him, delivered herself of her credo, now turned to me.
“Unquestionably,” he said in a serious and impressive tone, “there must be a place in heaven for these people. They are thoroughly in earnest.” Mrs. Clifford took advantage of the aside between her husband and me to follow up Madame Folibel’s oration by a few private remarks.
Clearly she was staggered in her fidelity to the “sentiment” which interfered so alarmingly with the success of the “crown of the edifice,” but she had not the honesty to confess it outright. She was ashamed of giving in. Without being often one whit less devoted to the vanities of life, an Englishwoman is held back by this kind of mauvaise honte from proclaiming her allegiance to them. She is ashamed of being in earnest about folly. Now, this British idiosyncrasy is quite foreign to a Frenchwoman; even when she is personally, either from character or circumstances, indifferent to the great fact of dress, she is always alive to its importance in the abstract, and will discuss it without any assumption of contemning wisdom, but soberly and intelligently, as befits a grave subject of recognized importance to her sisterhood in the carrying on of life.
“What do you advise me to do, dear?” said Mrs. Clifford, appealing to her husband, the wife and the woman warring vexedly in her spirit.
“Give in,” said Mr. Clifford. “What in the name of mercy could you do else! A dozen men in your place would have capitulated after that broadside ending in the woman and the bonnet.”