with their fancies, she would make herself their spokeswoman, and they
thought her a delightful _confidante_, since she had no right to find
fault with them.

Her absolute secrecy also won her the confidence of their seniors;
for, like Ninon, she had certain manly qualities. As a rule, our
confidence is given to those below rather than above us. We employ our
inferiors rather than our betters in secret transactions, and they
thus become the recipients of our inmost thoughts, and look on at our
meditations; Richelieu thought he had achieved success when he was
admitted to the Council. This penniless woman was supposed to be so
dependent on every one about her, that she seemed doomed to perfect
silence. She herself called herself the Family Confessional.

The Baroness only, remembering her ill-usage in childhood by the
cousin who, though younger, was stronger than herself, never wholly
trusted her. Besides, out of sheer modesty, she would never have told
her domestic sorrows to any one but God.

It may here be well to add that the Baron's house preserved all its
magnificence in the eyes of Lisbeth Fischer, who was not struck, as
the parvenu perfumer had been, with the penury stamped on the shabby
chairs, the dirty hangings, and the ripped silk. The furniture we live
with is in some sort like our own person; seeing ourselves every day,
we end, like the Baron, by thinking ourselves but little altered, and
still youthful, when others see that our head is covered with
chinchilla, our forehead scarred with circumflex accents, our stomach
assuming the rotundity of a pumpkin. So these rooms, always blazing in
Betty's eyes with the Bengal fire of Imperial victory, were to her
perennially splendid.