"Unfortunately, cousin," the Countess said, in the solemn tones of a
preacher, "a respectable woman dare not let herself be seen in improper
places."

They all agreeing with her, nevertheless, Madame de Villégby was present
at the Montefiores' performance two days later, dressed all in black,
and wearing a thick veil, at the back of a stage box.

And that woman was as cold as a steel buckler, and had married as soon
as she left the convent in which she had been to school, without any
affection or even liking for her husband, whom the most skeptical
respected as a saint, and who had a look of virgin purity on her calm
face as she went down the steps of the Madeleine on Sundays, after high
mass.

Countess Regina stretched herself nervously, grew pale, and trembled
like the strings of a violin, on which an artist had been playing some
wild symphony, and inhaled the nasty smell of the sawdust, as if it had
been the perfume of a bouquet of unknown flowers, and clenched her
hands, and gazed eagerly at the two mountebanks, whom the public
applauded rapturously at every feat. And contemptuously and haughtily
she compared those two men, who were as vigorous as wild animals that
have grown up in the open air, with the rickety limbs, which look so
awkward in the dress of an English groom, that had tried to inflame her
heart.

* * * * *

Count de Villégby had gone back to the country, to prepare for his
election as Councilor-General, and the very evening that he started,