And with that she raised her melancholy eyes and scanned the walls from
floor to ceiling. Her daughter Estelle, a slight, insignificant-looking
girl of sixteen, the thankless period of life, quitted the large
footstool on which she was sitting and silently came and propped up one
of the logs which had rolled from its place. But Mme de Chezelles, a
convent friend of Sabine's and her junior by five years, exclaimed:

"Dear me, I would gladly be possessed of a drawing room such as yours!
At any rate, you are able to receive visitors. They only build boxes
nowadays. Oh, if I were in your place!"

She ran giddily on and with lively gestures explained how she would
alter the hangings, the seats--everything, in fact. Then she would give
balls to which all Paris should run. Behind her seat her husband, a
magistrate, stood listening with serious air. It was rumored that she
deceived him quite openly, but people pardoned her offense and received
her just the same, because, they said, "she's not answerable for her
actions."

"Oh that Leonide!" the Countess Sabine contented herself by murmuring,
smiling her faint smile the while.

With a languid movement she eked out the thought that was in her. After
having lived there seventeen years she certainly would not alter
her drawing room now. It would henceforth remain just such as her
mother-in-law had wished to preserve it during her lifetime. Then
returning to the subject of conversation:

"I have been assured," she said, "that we shall also have the king of
Prussia and the emperor of Russia."