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By Root 1290 0

minutes past, Rose and Fauchery, who had been speaking very close to each other, had made him rather anxious. He hoped Rose was not going to waste her time with such stupidity. If she were he would make it his business to prevent it. And with his well-shaped hands, which sported a diamond ring on the little finger, he finished cutting up his venison steak. The conversation about children, however, continued. La Faloise, rendered quite bashful by Gaga’s proximity, began to ask her for news of her daughter, whom he had had the pleasure of seeing with her at the Variety Theatre. Lili was very well, but she was still quite a tomboy! He was quite astounded when he heard that she was almost nineteen years old. Gaga at once became in his eyes far more imposing. And as he tried to find out why she had not brought Lili with her—

“Oh, no! never, never!” she said, highly indignant. “Only three months ago she insisted on leaving school. I wished to marry her at once. But she loves me so much, I was obliged to have her with me, ah! quite against my wish, I assure you.”

Her blue eyelids, with the lashes all burnt away, blinked as she spoke of settling the young lady in life. If, at her age, she had never been able to put a sou on one side—always working, obliging the men still, especially very young ones, whose grandmother she might have been—it was really because a good marriage was worth far more. She leaned towards La Faloise, who turned quite red beneath the enormous naked and plastered shoulder with which she almost crushed him.

“You know,” she murmured, “if she makes a mistake, it won’t be my fault. But girls are so peculiar when they are young!”

There was a good deal of commotion going on round the table. The waiters hurried about. The next course, consisting of fattened pullets, fillets of sole and stewed liver, made its appearance. The head-waiter, who, in the way of wine, had up till then only offered Meursault, now sent round some Chambertin and some Léoville. In the slight hubbub occasioned by the changing of the plates, George, more surprised than ever, asked Daguenet if all the ladies had children; and he, amused by the questions, gave him a few particulars.

Lucy Stewart was the daughter of a porter of English origin employed on the Northern Railway; she was thirty-nine years old, with the head of a horse, but nevertheless a most adorable person, frightfully consumptive yet never dying—the greatest swell of all the women there, and who could count amongst her conquests three princes and a duke. Caroline Héquet, who was born at Bordeaux, was the daughter of a clerk in humble circumstances, who died of shame. She had the good luck to possess a mother who was a strong-minded woman, and who, after cursing her and indulging in a year’s reflection, suddenly restored her to her place in the maternal affections, with the object of watching over her fortunes. The daughter, who was twenty-five years old, and of a very cold nature, enjoyed the reputation of being one of the prettiest women in the market, at the price that never varied. The mother, a very orderly woman, kept the books with the utmost accuracy as to profit and loss, and managed the entire establishment from the small apartment she occupied two floors above, and where she had set up a dressmaking business for the production of her daughter’s elegant costumes and underclothing. As for Blanche de Sivry, whose real name was Jacqueline Baudu, she came from a village near Amiens. She was magnificently shaped but was very stupid and a great liar, pretending her grandfather was a general and not owning to her thirty-two years. She was very much in vogue with the Russians, on account of her corpulence.

Then Daguenet rapidly added a few details about the others. Clarisse Besnus was brought from Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer to Paris by a lady as nursery maid, and was debauched by the husband, who started her in her new career. Simone Cabiroche, the daughter of a furniture dealer of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, was educated at a high-class school with the object of becoming a governess;