Although at bottom Mme. Mauperin was an excellent sort of woman she rarely lost an opportunity of depreciating, in this way and with the most superb contempt and disgust, the wealth, birth and position of all the people she knew. It was not out of spite, nor was it for the pleasure of slandering and backbiting, nor yet because she was envious. She would refuse to believe in the respectability and uprightness of people, or even in the wealth they were said to have, simply from a prodigious _bourgeois_ pride, from a conviction that outside her own family there could be no good blood, and no integrity; that, with the exception of her own people, every one was an upstart; that nothing was substantial except what she possessed, and that what she had not was not worth having. "And to think that my wife has tales like that to tell about all the people we know!" said M. Mauperin. "Come now, papa--shall we have the pretty little Remoli girl--shall we?" "Ask your mother. Say on, Mme. Mauperin." "The Remoli girl? But, my dear, you know--" "I know nothing." "Oh! do you mean to say that you don't know her father's history? A poor Italian stucco worker. He came to Paris without a sou and bought a bit of ground with a wretched little house at Montparnasse. I don't know where he got the money from to buy it. Well, this land turned out to be a regular Montfaucon! He sold thirty thousand pounds' worth of his precious stuff--and then he's been mixed up with Stock Exchange affairs. Disgusting!" "Oh, well," put in Henri, "I fancy you are going out of your way to find folks. Why don't you ask Mlle. Bourjot? They happen to be at Sannois now." "Mlle. Bourjot?" repeated Mme. Mauperin. "Noemi?" said Renee quickly, "I should just think I should like to ask her. But this winter I thought her so distant with me. She has something or other--I don't know----" "She has, or rather she will have, twelve thousand pounds a year," interrupted Denoisel, "and mothers are apt to watch over their daughters when such is the case. They will not allow them to get too intimate with a sister who has a brother. They have made her understand this; that's about the long and short of it." "Then, too, they are so high and mighty, those folks are; they might have descended from--And yet," continued Mme. Mauperin, breaking off and turning to her son, "they have always been very pleasant with you, Henri, haven't they? Mme. Bourjot is always very nice to you?" "Yes, and she has complained several times of your not going to her soirees; she says you don't take Renee often enough to see her daughter." "Really?" exclaimed Renee, very delighted. "My dear," said Mme. Mauperin, "what do you think of what Henri says--Mlle. Bourjot?" "What objection do you want me to make?" "Well, then," said Mme. Mauperin, "Henri's idea shall be carried out. We'll go on Saturday, shall we, my dear? And you'll come with us, Henri?"