perfect bliss; nevertheless it is the best thing that has been imagined up
to this time, to enjoy life decently among respectable people. You are in
the flower of your age--you are quite good-looking, quite--and, by the
way, it will do you no harm to wear your skirts a little higher up behind,
with a proper sort of bustle; for you don't even know what they wear now,
my poor pet. Here, look! It's horrible, I know; but what can we do? we
must not attract attention. In short, what I meant to tell you is that you
still have all that is necessary, and even more than is necessary, to fix
a husband--if indeed there are any that can be fixed, which I hope is the
case--otherwise, we should have to despair wholly of Providence, if it did
not have some compensation in store for us after all our trials. It is
already a manifest sign of its kindness that you should have recovered
your _embonpoint_, my darling! Kiss your mother. Come, now, when is our
pretty little woman going to be married?"

There was no maternal exaggeration whatever in the compliments which the
baroness was addressing to Clotilde. All Paris looked upon her with the
same eyes as her mother. She had never been so attractive as now, and she
had always been infinitely so. Her person, reposed in the peace of her
mourning, had then the bright lustre of a fine fruit, ripe and fresh. Her
black eyes full of timid tenderness, her pure brow crowned with splendid
and life-like braids, her shoulders of rosy marble, her particular grace
of a young matron, at once handsome, loving, and chaste--all that, joined
to a spotless reputation and to sixty thousand francs a year, could not
fail to bring forward more than one pretender. And indeed they sprang up
in legions. Reason, and public opinion itself, which had done full justice
to her husband and to herself, were both urging her to a second wedding.
Her own private feelings, whatever might be their natural delicacy, did
not seem likely to prove an obstacle, for there was nothing in her heart
that was not true. She had been faithful to her husband, she had shed