"_Dame!_ if a girl wasn't fresh at her age! But she's running to fat, and I won't give her three years before she's a sight. And then, she's been brought up in such a curious way! Having no mother, she's done just as she chose, you see. Alone all day long with the clerks; young men, too--I actually believe she went down into the cellar with 'em! Fie! fie! what actions! catch me choosing that hussy for my son's wife! But he wouldn't listen to me, when I says to him: 'You'll repent of your bargain.'--You just wait a little while, monsieur, and you'll see. There's a certain Freluchon,--one of Monsieur Bocal's clerks,--who was dead in love with Pétronille. Everybody knows that; why, she didn't conceal it herself, but just laughed about it!--a modest girl doesn't laugh at such a thing.--This Freluchon taught her to swim--do you hear, monsieur?--to swim, in the river; she went into deep water with him! Fine doings! And Pamphile thinks that's all right. 'Look out what you're doing!' I says to him.--Oh, monsieur! what fools men are when they're in love!" "That is a profound truth, madame; but it does little honor to your sex; if women really were what men suppose them to be when they're in love, men wouldn't be such fools to love them." Madame Girie pursed up her lips, shook her head, and smiled, as she said: "Thank God! all women ain't Pétronilles!" "And all mothers-in-law aren't like you, madame!" I don't know whether Madame Girie took that for a compliment, but she bowed low. For my part, I had had quite enough of the excellent dame's chatter, so I left my seat and the ballroom, where the odor of mulled wine and punch was beginning to be insufferable. XIV A YOUNG DANDY.--A DELIGHTFUL HUSBAND Returning to the Dablémar function, I drew a long breath of delight; a pleasant odor of patchouli and muslin replaced the fumes of mulled wine, which were intensified on the other side of the corridor by a multitude of other emanations. The temperature, too, was endurable, and the faces of the guests did not glisten with drunkenness and perspiration, which impart to the countenance a gloss that does not embellish it. My first care was to look about for Madame Sordeville. I discovered her talking with her friend Frédérique, and with them was a young man whom I had not yet seen. This new personage was twenty-eight to thirty years of age, and was dressed in the height of fashion. He was very dark, and his hair, artistically parted and curled, was beautifully glossy. A long, pale face, regular features, black eyes somewhat sunken, a small, tightly closed mouth, a slight, carefully trimmed moustache, made him a very good-looking fellow; but a self-sufficient, conceited air, which almost amounted to impertinence--that too I observed in my scrutiny of that young man, who, at the very outset, and for some reason which I could not explain, made a most unpleasant impression on me.