He looked around the room, and at the furniture with familiar tenderness.
He opened a drawer:

"Here are mamma's eye-glasses. How she searched for these eye-glasses!
Now I will show you my room. If it is not in order you must excuse
Madame Fusellier, who is trained to respect my disorder."

The curtains at the windows were down. He did not lift them. After an
hour she drew back the red satin draperies; rays of light dazzled her
eyes and fell on her floating hair. She looked for a mirror and found
only a looking-glass of Venice, dull in its wide ebony border. Rising on
the tips of her toes to see herself in it, she said:

"Is that sombre and far-away spectre I? The women who have looked at
themselves in this glass can not have complimented you on it."

As she was taking pins from the table she noticed a little bronze figure
which she had not yet seen. It was an old Italian work of Flemish taste:
a nude woman, with short legs and heavy stomach, who apparently ran with
an arm extended. She thought the figure had a droll air. She asked what
she was doing.

"She is doing what Madame Mundanity does on the portal of the cathedral
at Basle."

But Therese, who had been at Basle, did not know Madame Mundanity. She
looked at the figure again, did not understand, and asked:

"Is it something very bad? How can a thing shown on the portal of a