“Yes, continue the old habit--I will allow you to do so,” she said. “You will soon renew your acquaintance with him.” But Annette shook her head. “No, no, it would embarrass me,” she said. The Duchess embraced her, and examined her with all the interest of a connoisseur. “Look me in the face, my child,” she said. “Yes, you have exactly the same expression as your mother; you won't be so bad by-and-by, when you have acquired more polish. And you must grow a little plumper--not very much, but a little. You are very thin.” “Oh, don't say that!” exclaimed the Countess. “Why not?” “It is so nice to be slender. I intend to reduce myself at once.” But Madame de Mortemain took offense, forgetting in her anger the presence of a young girl. “Oh, of course, you are all in favor of bones, because you can dress them better than flesh. For my part, I belong to the generation of fat women! To-day is the day of thin ones. They make me think of the lean kine of Egypt. I cannot understand how men can admire your skeletons. In my time they demanded more!” She subsided amid the smiles of the company, but added, turning to Annette: “Look at your mamma, little one; she does very well; she has attained the happy medium--imitate her.” They passed into the dining-room. After they were seated, Musadieu resumed the discussion. “For my part, I say that men should be thin, because they are formed for exercises that require address and agility, incompatible with corpulency. But the women's case is a little different. Don't you think so, Corbelle?” Corbelle was perplexed, the Duchess being stout and his own wife more than slender. But the Baroness came to the rescue of her husband, and resolutely declared herself in favor of slimness. The year before that, she declared, she had been obliged to struggle with the beginning of _embonpoint_, over which she soon triumphed. “Tell us how you did it,” demanded Madame de Guilleroy. The Baroness explained the method employed by all the fashionable women of the day. One must never drink while eating; but an hour after the repast a cup of tea may be taken, boiling hot. This method succeeded with everyone. She cited astonishing cases of fat women who in three months had become more slender than the blade of a knife. The Duchess exclaimed in exasperation: “Good gracious, how stupid to torture oneself like that! You like nothing any more--nothing--not even champagne. Bertin, as an artist, what do you think of this folly?” “_Mon Dieu_, Madame, I am a painter and I simply arrange the drapery, so it is all the same to me. If I were a sculptor I might complain.” “But as a man, which do you prefer?” “I? Oh, a certain rounded slimness--what my cook calls a nice little corn-fed chicken. It is not fat, but plump and delicate.” The comparison caused a laugh; but the incredulous Countess looked at her daughter and murmured: “No, it is very much better to be thin; slender women never grow old.”