However, they soft-pedaled this mutual cult in order to cajole Annette. They were all compliments, for her, for her house, for her clothes, her taste, her wit, her beauty. The excessively laudatory tone grated on Annette a bit; but one does not remain insensible to the flattering opinion that others have of one, particularly when those others seem messengers from the person whom one loves. It was hard not to believe that this was the case; for the Brissot ladies continually brought Roger's name into the conversation. They intertwined his praises with Annette's; they made smiling, persistent allusions to the impression Annette had produced on him, to the things she had said to him, and which he had hastened to repeat enthusiastically--(he repeated everything: Annette was embarrassed but none the less touched). They laid great stress upon his brilliant future; and Madame Brissot assumed an impressive tone in which to phrase her hope that Roger would find--that he had found--a helpmate worthy of him. She named no one, but the meaning was clear. All these little ruses were visible to the naked eye, at twenty paces. They were meant to be. It was a sort of social game, in which one must talk around the word that everyone has on his tongue, without ever pronouncing it. Madame Brissot's smile seemed watching Annette's lips for the word that was about to come out, as though to cry: "A bargain!" Annette smiled, opened her mouth. But the word did not come. . . . Annette was invited by the Brissots to intimate evening parties in their apartment on the Rue de Provence. She became acquainted with father Brissot, tall and big and rubicund, with cunning eyes beneath bushy brows, a short gray beard, and the air of a crafty and fatherly lawyer, who heaped upon her gallantries and ancient jests. He too tried to play the social game, but he put his foot in it with his circumlocutions. Annette took fright, and Madame Brissot signalled her husband to keep out of the affair. So he stayed outside the game, content to jeer and follow it from the corner of his eye, convinced that it was not his business and that the women would acquit themselves better than he.