Thereupon the manager detailed his plans, the festivities to be divided by days, as at Vaux when Fouquet entertained Louis XIV.; one day a play, another day Provencal fetes, _farandoles_, bull-fights, local music; the third day--And, in his mania for management, he was already outlining programmes, posters, while Bois-l'Hery, with both hands in his pockets, lying back in his chair, slept peacefully with his cigar stuck in the corner of his sneering mouth, and the Marquis de Monpavon, always on parade, drew up his breastplate every moment, to keep himself awake. De Gery had left them early. He had gone to take refuge with the old lady--who had known him, and his brothers, too, when they were children--in the modest parlor in the wing, with the white curtains and light wall-paper covered with figures, where the Nabob's mother tried to revive her past as an artisan, with the aid of some relics saved from the wreck. Paul talked softly, sitting opposite the handsome old woman with the severe and regular features, the white hair piled on top of her head like the flax on her distaff, who sat erect upon her chair, her flat bust wrapped in a little green shawl;--never in her life had she rested her back against the back of a chair or sat in an armchair. He called her Francoise and she called him Monsieur Paul. They were old friends. And what do you suppose they were talking about? Of her grandchildren, _pardi!_ of Bernard's three boys whom she did not know, whom she would have loved so dearly to know. "Ah! Monsieur Paul, if you knew how I long for them! I should have been so happy if he had brought me my three little ones instead of all these fine gentlemen. Just think, I have never seen them, except in those pictures yonder. Their mother frightens me a bit, she's a great lady out-and-out, a Demoiselle Afchin. But the children, I'm sure they're not little coxcombs, but would be very fond of their old _granny_. It would seem to me as if it was their father a little boy again, and I'd give them what I didn't give the father--for, you see, Monsieur Paul, parents aren't always just. They have favorites. But God is just. You ought to see how He deals with the faces that you paint and fix up the best, to the injury of the others. And the favoritism of the old people often does harm to the young." She sighed as she glanced in the direction of the great alcove, from which, through the high lambrequins and falling draperies, issued at intervals a long, shuddering breath like the moan of a sleeping child who has been whipped and has cried bitterly.