While these thoughts were in my mind the door opened. An old servant, very simply dressed, after some hesitation told me she would see if the ladies were at home and showed me into a little drawing-room. It was full of furniture, too full in fact. If I had raised the covers from the furniture I should have seen that the quality of the upholstery and the gilded wood betokened former opulence. A beautiful tapestry covered one of the walls. It had been necessary to double it up to adapt it to the size of the room, the ceiling of which I could almost reach with my cane. The grand piano, the great bronze clock, and the too lofty candelabra had also come from a financier’s mansion. These mute witnesses of vanished splendour told by their presence alone of the melancholy of the ruin with more eloquence than any phrases could do. Besides, I had scarcely time to meditate upon what Claude Larcher, in his evil days of pedantry, had called the psychology of this furniture before a woman of about fifty entered the drawing-room. I could see at a glance that she was Camille’s mother. Madam Favier at an interval of a quarter of a century resembled her child with a similarity of features which became almost sad in its aging and deformation. There is something very sorrowful in finding oneself face to face with the anticipated spectre of a fine young beauty, whom one admires and is beginning to love. Still the mother’s and daughter’s expression were so different that the likeness was at once corrected. Just as Camille’s blue eyes, with their pupils in turn very clear or very dark, very animated and very languishing, revealed a passionate inequality of soul, and profound troubles, so did the peaceful and sluggish azure of Madam Favier’s eyes tell of passive serenity, resigned acceptance, and above all happiness. This woman, the widow of the stock-broker, whose life ended in a tragedy, was the image of internal peace. Seeing her as I saw her, a little fat, with the fresh colour of health in her full cheeks, and if not elegant at any rate very tasteful in a dress which was almost fashionable, it was impossible at first to imagine that this woman had endured the trials of a drama, of ruin and suicide, and that this tranquil and irreproachable dowager was simply an actress’ mother.