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Updated: May 31, 2025
"Listen, Bernard, there's only one thing that will do any good. If you wish that we should be friends as we used to be, that these handshakes that we have exchanged should not be wasted, you must induce my wife to be reconciled to you. Without that it's of no use. When Mademoiselle Afchin shut her door in our faces, you let her do it, didn't you?
Sometimes the man in the fez, himself hardly able to stand, brought them home horribly ill. And yet Jansoulet loved his little ones, especially the youngest, who, with his long hair and his doll-like aspect, reminded him of little Afchin in her carriage.
Afchin, in those days a delicious little doll of twelve years old, with radiant complexion, hair, and health, used often to come to fetch her father from the counting-house in the great chariot with its yoke of mules which carried them to their fine villa at La Marsu, in the vicinity of Tunis.
They smoked and drank; it was a painful sight. Sometimes the man in the fez, hardly able to hold himself upright, would bring them home frightfully sick. And yet Jansoulet was fond of them, the youngest especially, who, with his long hair, his doll-like manner, recalled to him the little Afchin passing in her carriage.
I am a little afraid of their mother, she is quite a great lady, a Miss Afchin. But them, the children, I am sure they are not proud, and they would love their old granny. It would be like having their father a little boy again, and I would give to them what I did not give to him. You see, M. Paul, parents are not always just. They have their favourites. But God is just, he is.
And the baroness glanced furtively toward the gorgeous, old-fashioned clock hanging in a corner of the salon. Five o'clock already, and the stout Afchin did not come. The Levantines began to laugh behind their fans.
After such a display, it would be hard to return; that is what he tried to make Mademoiselle Afchin understand, but she replied only by prolonged groans. He strove to comfort her, to amuse her, but what form of distraction could be made to appeal to that abnormally apathetic nature?
Furthermore, she was ill-bred, gluttonous, sensual, arrogant, a Levantine jewel in perfection. But Jansoulet saw nothing of all this. For him she was, and remained, up to the time of her arrival in Paris, a superior creature, a lady of the most exalted rank, a Demoiselle Afchin.
When Mlle. Afchin shut her door in our faces you let her have her way, did you not? In the same way, on my side, if Marie said to me when I go home, 'I will not let you be friends, all my protestations now would not prevent me from throwing you overboard. For there is no such thing as friendship in face of such difficulties. Peace at one's fireside is better than everything else."
She bore but little resemblance to Mademoiselle Afchin, the tall, graceful blonde, with the tired features and irreproachable toilet, worthy in every respect to bear a name as illustrious as that of Dr. Jenkins. In the last two or three months the beautiful Madame Jenkins had changed greatly, had grown much older.
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