“At least three weeks,” put in the Duchess; “even round Paris, where they’re very far forward. Down in Normandy, don’t you know, at his father’s place,” she went on, pointing to the young Duc de Châtellerault, “where they have some splendid apple trees close to the seashore, like a Japanese screen, they’re never really pink until after the twentieth of May.” “I never see them,” said the young Duke, “because they give me hay fever. Such a bore.” “Hay fever? I never heard of that before,” said the historian. “It’s the fashionable complaint just now,” the librarian informed him. “That all depends, you won’t get it at all, probably, if it’s a good year for apples. You know Le Normand’s saying: ‘When it’s a good year for apples ...’,” put in M. d’Argencourt who, not being really French, was always trying to give himself a Parisian air. “You’re quite right,” Mme. de Villeparisis told her niece, “these are from the South. It was a florist who sent them round and asked me to accept them as a present. You’re surprised, I dare say, Monsieur Valmère,” she turned to the librarian, “that a florist should make me a present of apple blossom. Well, I may be an old woman, but I’m not quite on the shelf yet, I have still a few friends,” she went on with a smile that might have been taken as a sign of her simple nature but meant rather, I could not help feeling, that she thought it effective to pride herself on the friendship of a mere florist when she moved in such distinguished circles. Bloch rose and went over to look at the flowers which Mme. de Villeparisis was painting. “Never mind, Marquise,” said the historian, sitting down again, “even though we should have another of those Revolutions which have stained so many pages of our history with blood—and, upon my soul, in these days one can never tell,” he added, with a circular and circumspect glance, as though to make sure that there was no “disaffected” person in the room, though he had not the least suspicion that there actually was, “with a talent like yours and your five languages you would be certain to get on all right.” The historian of the Fronde was feeling quite refreshed, for he had forgotten his insomnia. But he suddenly remembered that he had not slept for the last six nights, whereupon a crushing weariness, born of his mind, paralysed his limbs, made him bow his shoulders, and his melancholy face began to droop like an old man’s. Bloch tried to express his admiration in an appropriate gesture, but only succeeded in knocking over with his elbow the glass containing the spray of apple blossom, and all the water was spilled on the carpet. “Really, you have the fingers of a fairy,” went on (to the Marquise) the historian who, having his back turned, to me at that moment, had not noticed Bloch’s clumsiness. But Bloch took this for a sneer at himself, and to cover his shame in insolence retorted: “It’s not of the slightest importance; I’m not wet.”