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Updated: May 23, 2025
"No, do not speak of your Germans," Mme Chantereau was saying. "Song is gaiety; song is light. Have you heard Patti in the Barber of Seville?" "She was delicious!" murmured Leonide, who strummed none but operatic airs on her piano. Meanwhile the Countess Sabine had rung. When on Tuesdays the number of visitors was small, tea was handed round the drawing room itself.
"Count Bismarck is to accompany him," said Mme du Joncquoy. "Do you know the count? I lunched with him at my brother's ages ago, when he was representative of Prussia in Paris. There's a man now whose latest successes I cannot in the least understand." "But why?" asked Mme Chantereau. "Good gracious, how am I to explain? He doesn't please me. His appearance is boorish and underbred.
Oh, that's unbearable!" Indeed, they were laughing round Mme Chantereau, who had just repeated an assertion she had heard made in Alsace, where her husband owned a foundry. "We have the emperor, fortunately," said Count Muffat in his grave, official way. It was the last phrase Fauchery was able to catch. He closed the door after casting one more glance in the direction of the Countess Sabine.
Mme du Joncquoy was not fond of any of them save Weber, while Mme Chantereau stood up for the Italians. The ladies' voices had turned soft and languishing, and in front of the hearth one might have fancied one's self listening in meditative, religious retirement to the faint, discreet music of a little chapel.
Mme du Joncquoy declared that the present proceedings were senseless. It was madness to crowd five hundred people into a room which would scarcely contain two hundred. In fact, why not sign the wedding contract on the Place du Carrousel? This was the outcome of the new code of manners, said Mme Chantereau.
But all the same I've pressed Foucarmont into the service, and he's going to try to get Louise from the Palais-Royal." "Is it not true, Monsieur de Vandeuvres," asked Mme Chantereau, raising her voice, "that Wagner's music was hissed last Sunday?" "Oh, frightfully, madame," he made answer, coming forward with his usual exquisite politeness.
Monsieur Daguenet is a young man of the greatest merit. I am acquainted with his thoughts; he is anxious to live down the errors of his youth. Estelle will bring him back to the path of virtue, be sure of that." "Oh, Estelle!" Mme Chantereau murmured disdainfully. "I believe the dear young thing to be incapable of willing anything; she is so insignificant!" This opinion caused M. Venot to smile.
Beside her stood Muffat, looking aged and a little pale, but he, too, was smiling in his calm and worthy fashion. "And just to think that he was once master," continued Mme Chantereau, "and that not a single rout seat would have come in without his permission! Ah well, she's changed all that; it's her house now. D'you remember when she did not want to do her drawing room up again?
From music the talk had declined to purveyors. Boissier was the only person for sweetmeats and Catherine for ices. Mme Chantereau, however, was all for Latinville. Speech grew more and more indolent, and a sense of lassitude was lulling the room to sleep. Steiner had once more set himself secretly to undermine the deputy, whom he held in a state of blockade in the corner of a settee.
Several ladies had formed a circle round the hearth, and Mme du Joncquoy, whose brother, a diplomat, had just fulfilled a mission in the East, was giving some details about the court of Nazr-ed-Din. "Are you out of sorts, my dear?" asked Mme Chantereau, the wife of an ironmaster, seeing the countess shivering slightly and growing pale as she did so.
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