“Am I not right, M. l’Ambassadeur, Mme. Leroi is quite uninteresting, isn’t she, quite out of keeping with the people who come here; I was quite right not to make friends with her, wasn’t I?” Whether from independence or because he was tired, M. de Norpois replied merely in a bow full of respect but devoid of meaning. “Sir,” went on Mme. de Villeparisis with a laugh, “there are some absurd people in the world. Would you believe that I had a visit this afternoon from a gentleman who tried to persuade me that he found more pleasure in kissing my hand than a young woman’s?” I guessed at once that this was Legrandin. M. de Norpois smiled with a slight quiver of the eyelid, as though such a remark had been prompted by a concupiscence so natural that one could not find fault with the person who had uttered it, almost as though it were the beginning of a romance which he was prepared to forgive, if not to encourage, with the perverse indulgence of a Voisenon or the younger Crébillon. “Many young women’s hands would be incapable of doing what I see there,” said the Prince, pointing to Mme. de Villeparisis’s unfinished water-colours. And he asked her whether she had seen the flower paintings by Fantin-Latour which had recently been exhibited. “They are of the first order, and indicate, as people say nowadays, a fine painter, one of the masters of the palette,” declared M. de Norpois; “I consider, all the same, that they stand no comparison with these, in which I find it easier to recognise the colouring of the flower.” Even supposing that the partiality of an old lover, the habit of flattering people, the critical standard admissible in a small circle had dictated this speech to the ex-Ambassador, it proved upon what an absolute vacuum of true taste the judgment of people in society is based, so arbitrary that the smallest trifle can make it rush to the wildest absurdities, on the way to which it is stopped, held up by no genuinely felt impression.