“Sir, I am charmed. All Alphonse’s friends are mine. Now you are one of us, the house is yours.”
Duveyrier, warned by a note from Bachelard, also greeted Monsieur Josserand very amiably. Octave was surprised at the counselor’s youthful appearance. He was no longer the severe and ill-at-ease individual, who never seemed to be in his own home in the drawing-room of the Rue de Choiseul. The deep red blotches on his face were turning to a rosy hue, his oblique eyes shone with a childish delight, whilst Clarisse related in the midst of a group how he sometimes hastened to come and see her during a short adjournment of the court—just time to jump into a cab, to kiss her, and start back again. Then he complained of being overworked. Four sittings a week, from eleven to five; always the same skein of bickerings to unravel, it ended by destroying all feeling in one’s heart.
“It is true,” said he, laughing, “one requires a few roses amongst all that. I feel better afterward.”
However, he did not wear his bit of red ribbon, but always took it off when visiting his mistress; a last scruple, a delicate distinction, which his sense of decency obstinately persisted in. Clarisse, without wishing to say so, felt very much hurt at it.
Octave, who had at once shook hands with the young woman like a comrade, listened and looked about him. Clarisse never received other women, out of decency, she said. When her acquaintances complained that her drawing-room was in want of a few ladies, she would answer with a laugh:
She had arranged a decent home for Alphonse, very middle-class in the main, having a mania for what was proper all through the ups and downs of her existence. When she received she would not be addressed familiarly.
The little maid handed round some glasses of punch, with her agreeable air. Octave took one, and, leaning toward his friend, whispered in his ear:
“The servant is better than the mistress.”
“Why, of course! always!” said Trublot, with a shrug of the shoulders, full of a disdainful conviction.
Clarisse came and talked with them for a moment. She multiplied herself, going from one to another, casting a word here, a laugh or gesture there. As each new-comer lighted a cigar the drawing-room was soon full of smoke.