Rougon occasionally went to Countess Balbi's for a few minutes towards four in the afternoon. He walked there in a neighbourly way, for she lived in a small house overlooking the avenue of the Champs Élysées, only a few yards from the Rue Marbeuf. She was seldom at home, and when by chance she did happen to be there she was in bed, and had to send excuses for not making her appearance. This, however, did not prevent the staircase of the little house from being crowded with noisy visitors, or the drawing-room doors from being perpetually on the swing. Her daughter Clorinde was wont to receive her friends in a gallery, something like an artist's studio, with large windows overlooking the avenue. For nearly three months Rougon, with his blunt distaste for female wiles, had responded very coldly to the advances of these ladies, who had managed to get introduced to him at a ball given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs. He met them everywhere, both of them smiling with the same winning smile--the mother always silent, while the daughter always chattered and looked him straight in the face. However, he still went on avoiding them, lowering his eyes so as not to see them, and refusing the invitations which they sent him. Then as they continued to press him hard and pursued him even to his own house, past which Clorinde used to ride ostentatiously, he made inquiries before at last venturing to call on them. At the Sardinian Legation the ladies were spoken of in very favourable terms. There had been a real Count Balbi, it appeared; the Countess still kept up relations with persons of high position at Turin, and the daughter, during the preceding year, had been on the point of marrying a petty German prince. But at the Duchess of Sanquirino's, where Rougon made his next inquiries, he heard a different story. There he was told that Clorinde had been born two years after the Count's death, and a very complicated history of the Balbis was retailed to him. The husband and wife had led most adventurous and dissolute lives; they had been divorced in France, but had afterwards become reconciled to each other in Italy, their subsequent cohabitation being an illicit one, in consequence of their previous divorce.