"Look at your mamma, little one; she does very well; she has attained
the happy medium--imitate her."

They passed into the dining-room. After they were seated, Musadieu
resumed the discussion.

"For my part, I say that men should be thin, because they are formed
for exercises that require address and agility, incompatible with
corpulency. But the women's case is a little different. Don't you think
so, Corbelle?"

Corbelle was perplexed, the Duchess being stout and his own wife more
than slender. But the Baroness came to the rescue of her husband, and
resolutely declared herself in favor of slimness. The year before that,
she declared, she had been obliged to struggle with the beginning of
_embonpoint_, over which she soon triumphed.

"Tell us how you did it," demanded Madame de Guilleroy.

The Baroness explained the method employed by all the fashionable women
of the day. One must never drink while eating; but an hour after the
repast a cup of tea may be taken, boiling hot. This method succeeded
with everyone. She cited astonishing cases of fat women who in three
months had become more slender than the blade of a knife. The Duchess
exclaimed in exasperation:

"Good gracious, how stupid to torture oneself like that! You like
nothing any more--nothing--not even champagne. Bertin, as an artist,
what do you think of this folly?"