The millionairess rival of this poor girl was reclining rather than sitting upon a kind of bed of the purest Empire style, after the manner in which David has immortalized the cruel grace of Madam Récamier, the illustrious patroness of coquettes of the siren order. She wore one of those dresses which are very simple in appearance, but which in reality mark the limit between superior elegance and the other kind. The greatest artists in the business are the only ones successful with them. It consisted of a skirt of a thick dead-black silk which absorbed the light instead of reflecting it. A cuirass, a jet coat of mail, applied to this stuff, showed distinctly the shape of the bust, and allowed the whiteness of the flesh to shine through at the bare places at the shoulders and arms. A jet girdle, a model of those worn in ancient statues on tombs by queens of the Middle Ages, followed the sinuous line of the hips, and terminated in two pendants crossed very low down. Enormous turquoises surrounded by diamonds shone in this pretty woman’s ears. These turquoises and a golden serpent on each arm—two marvellous copies of golden serpents in the Museum at Naples—were the only jewels to lighten this costume, which made her figure look longer and more slender even than it was. Her blonde pallor, heightened by the contrast of this sombre harmony in black and gold, took the delicacy of living ivory. Not a stone shone in her clear golden hair, and it looked as if she had matched the blue of her turquoise with the blue of her eyes, so exactly similar was the shade, except that the blue of these stones, which is supposed to pale when the wearer is in danger, revealed tender and almost loving shades when compared with the metallic and implacable azure of her eyes. She was fanning herself with a large feather fan as black as her dress, on which was a countess’ coronet encrusted in roses. It was without doubt a slight effort towards a definite relationship with the real Bonnivet. I have found out since that she went further than that. But the real Duc de Bonnivet, on the occasion of a charity fête, where Queen Anne had risked claiming a title, had interposed with a lordly and inflexible letter, and all that was left of this thwarted pretension was this coronet, embroidered here and there, without a coat of arms.