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“Oh, if you don’t mind, not that one! It’s too small for two, and too big for me by myself. I shouldn’t feel comfortable.”

“You remind me, for it was exactly like this one, of an armchair I had for many years, until at last I couldn’t keep it any longer, because it had been given to my mother by the unfortunate Duchesse de Praslin. My mother, though she was the simplest person in the world, really, had ideas that belonged to another generation, which even in those days I could scarcely understand; and at first she had not been at all willing to let herself be introduced to Mme de Praslin, who had been plain Mlle Sebastiani, while she, because she was a Duchess, felt that it was not for her to be introduced to my mother. And really, you know,” Mme de Villeparisis went on, forgetting that she herself did not understand these fine shades of distinction, “even if she had just been Mme de Choiseul, there was a good deal to be said for her claim. The Choiseuls are everything you could want; they spring from a sister of Louis the Fat; they were real sovereigns down in Bassigny. I admit that we beat them in marriages and in distinction, but the seniority is pretty much the same. This little matter of precedence gave rise to several comic incidents, such as a luncheon party which was kept waiting a whole hour or more before one of these ladies could make up her mind to let herself be introduced to the other. In spite of which they became great friends, and she gave my mother a chair like this one, in which people always refused to sit, as you’ve just done, until one day my mother heard a carriage drive into the courtyard. She asked a young servant who it was. ‘The Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld, ma’am.’ ‘Very well, say that I am at home.’ A quarter of an hour passed; no one came. ‘What about the Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld?’ my mother asked, ‘where is she?’ ‘She’s on the stairs, ma’am, getting her breath,’ said the young servant, who had not been long up from the country, where my mother had the excellent habit of getting all her servants. Often she had seen them born. That’s the only way to get really good ones. And they’re the rarest of luxuries. And sure enough the Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld had the greatest difficulty in getting upstairs, for she was an enormous woman, so enormous, indeed, that when she did come into the room my mother was quite at a loss for a moment to know where to put her. And then the seat that Mme de Praslin had given her caught her eye. ‘Won’t you sit down?’ she said, bringing it forward. And the Duchess filled it from side to side. She was quite a pleasant woman, for all her . . . imposingness. ‘She still creates a certain effect when she comes in,’ one of our friends said once. ‘She certainly creates an effect when she goes out,’ said my mother, who was rather more fine in her speech than would be thought proper nowadays. Even in Mme de La Rochefoucauld’s own drawing-room people didn’t hesitate to make fun of her to her face (and she was always the first to laugh at it) over her ample proportions. ‘But are you all alone?’ my mother once asked M. de La Rochefoucauld, when she had come to pay a call on the Duchess, and being met at the door by him had not seen his wife who was in an alcove at the other end of the room. ‘Is Mme de La Rochefoucauld not at home? I don’t see her.’—‘How charming of you!’ replied the Duke, who had about the worst judgment of any man I have ever known, but was not altogether lacking in humour.”

After dinner, when I had gone upstairs with my grandmother, I said to her that the qualities which attracted us in Mme de Villeparisis, her tact, her shrewdness, her discretion, her self-effacement, were not perhaps of very great value since those who possessed them in the highest degree were merely people like Molé and Loménie, and that if the want of them can make everyday social relations disagreeable yet it did not prevent conceited fellows who had no judgment—whom