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Updated: May 18, 2025
On the pavement of the Boulevard Malesherbes, two policemen, wrapped in their hooded coats, restrained the crowd that gathered in front of the huge double-door of the house occupied by Madame Marsy.
His eyes followed the movement of his glass and one after another he saw Madame Marsy, Jouvenet, Madame Gerson, so many living and exceedingly taunting recollections, when suddenly Sulpice trembled, shaken by a keener and almost angry feeling as his glance was directed to a box against the dark-red of which two faces were boldly outlined: those of Rosas and Marianne.
She was also very much astonished and not a little grieved when Madame Gerson abruptly spoke in a loud voice before all the guests concerning Madame Marsy, at whose house it was, in fact, that she made the acquaintance of Vaudrey. Madame Gerson showed her pretty teeth in a very charming manner as she tore her old friend Sabine to pieces, as it were.
There was some romantic gossip whispered about her. It was said that she had formerly led Philippe Marsy, the artist, a hard life. This artist was the painter of Charity, the picture so much admired at the Luxembourg, where it hangs between a Nymph by Henner and a Portrait of a Lady by Carolus Duran.
She politely advised Adrienne, without appearing to do so, as to many matters, in such a way as to convey reproof under the guise of kindness. Madame Vaudrey would have done well, as Madame Gerson also observed, to have studied the Code du Cérémonial on reaching Place Beauvau. Like Madame Marsy, Madame Gerson had gradually gained Adrienne's friendship.
From an ostentatious desire to be able to tell of what happened at the ministry; to be on the first list of guests, when the minister received or gave a ball, Sabine Marsy, who had suffered from the mania of aspiring to become an artist, patronized the intransigeant painters and exhibited at the salon, now set her mind on playing the rôle of a political figure in Paris.
Besides, she carefully concealed her melancholy. She knew that she was already reproached for being somewhat sad. A minister's wife should know how to smile. This was what Madame Marsy never failed to repeat to her as often as possible when she visited her at Place Beauvau.
This pale, slender youth in his student's uniform would sometimes steal furtively up the staircase to pay his mother a visit as a stranger might have done, never staying long, however, but hurrying off again to rejoin an old woman who waited at the corner of the street and who would take him by the arm and walk away with him Madame Marsy, his grandmother.
Besides it is easy enough in Paris to have a salon if one knows how to give dinners. Some squares of Bristol board engraved by Stern and posted to good addresses, will attract with an almost disconcerting facility, a crowd of visitors who will swarm around a festive board like bees around a honeycomb. Paris is a town of guests. Then too, Madame Marsy was herself so captivating.
Chance had placed in this All-Paris gathering, Madame Sabine Marsy and Madame Gerson, the two friends who detested each other. The pretty little Madame Gerson occupied and filled with her prattle, the box of the Prefect of Police No. 30, in which Monsieur Jouvenet showed his churchwarden's profile. She was talking aloud about her salon, her receptions, her acquaintances.
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