“My poets? They forget me, they abandon me. One should not rely on anybody. Men and women--nothing is sure. Life is a continual betrayal. Only that poor Miss Bell does not forget me. She has written to me from Florence and sent her book.” “Miss Bell? Isn’t she that young person who looks, with her yellow waving hair, like a little lapdog?” He reflected, and expressed the opinion that she must be at least thirty. An old lady, wearing with modest dignity her crown of white hair, and a little vivacious man with shrewd eyes, came in suddenly--Madame Marmet and M. Paul Vence. Then, carrying himself very stiffly, with a square monocle in his eye, appeared M. Daniel Salomon, the arbiter of elegance. The General hurried out. They talked of the novel of the week. Madame Marmet had dined often with the author, a young and very amiable man. Paul Vence thought the book tiresome. “Oh,” sighed Madame Martin, “all books are tiresome. But men are more tiresome than books, and they are more exacting.” Madame Marmet said that her husband, who had much literary taste, had retained, until the end of his days, a horror of naturalism. She was the widow of a member of the ‘Academie des Inscriptions’, and plumed herself upon her illustrious widowhood. She was sweet and modest in her black gown and her beautiful white hair. Madame Martin said to M. Daniel Salomon that she wished to consult him particularly on the picture of a group of beautiful children. “You will tell me if it pleases you. You may also give me your opinion, Monsieur Vence, unless you disdain such trifles.” M. Daniel Salomon looked at Paul Vence through his monocle with disdain. Paul Vence surveyed the drawing-room. “You have beautiful things, Madame. That would be nothing. But you have only beautiful things, and all serve to set off your own beauty.” She did not conceal her pleasure at hearing him speak in that way. She regarded Paul Vence as the only really intelligent man she knew. She had appreciated him before his books had made him celebrated. His ill-health, his dark humor, his assiduous labor, separated him from society. The little bilious man was not very pleasing; yet he attracted her. She held in high esteem his profound irony, his great pride, his talent ripened in solitude, and she admired him, with reason, as an excellent writer, the author of powerful essays on art and on life.