"Herself, Monsieur! The carriage-door was open for a minute to let
her little boy, who had just come from I don't know where, get in.
She hasn't changed scarcely at all. Well, why should those women
change?--they never worry themselves about anything. Only the Coccoz
woman looks a little fatter than she used to be. And the idea of a
woman that was taken in here out of pure charity coming to show off
her velvets and diamonds in a carriage with a crest painted on it!
Isn't it shameful!"

"Therese!" I cried, in a terrible voice, "if you ever speak to me
again about that lady except in terms of the deepest respect, you
and I will fall out! ...Bring me the Sevres vases to put those
violets in, which now give the City of Books a charm it never had
before."

While Therese went off with a sigh to get the Sevres vases, I
continued to contemplate those beautiful scattered violets, whose
odour spread all about me like the perfume of some sweet presence,
some charming soul; and I asked myself how it had been possible for
me never to recognise Madame Coccoz in the person of the Princess
Trepof. But that vision of the young widow, showing me her little
child on the stairs, had been a very rapid one. I had much more
reason to reproach myself for having passed by a gracious and lovely
soul without knowing it.

"Bonnard," I said to myself, "thou knowest how to decipher old texts;
but thou dost not know how to read in the Book of Life. That giddy
little Madame Trepof, whom thou once believed to possess no more
soul than a bird, has expended, in pure gratitude, more zeal and finer
tact than thou didst ever show for anybody's sake. Right royally