I remembered how the humiliating and the ridiculous were mingled in the arrival of my mother at Compiègne. I went to meet her, as Orestes might have gone to meet Clytemnestra, and I found a woman wholly occupied with her mourning, her travelling bag, and her little cushions. Would the same ironical contrast present itself in this first interview with my stepfather? Very likely, and I should be convinced once more of my readiness to be intoxicated with my own ideas. It was always painful to me to be convicted of that weakness, and also of my abiding inability to form clear, precise, and definite views. I mentally compared myself with the bulls which I had seen in the bull-ring at San Sebastian--stupid animals; they foamed and stamped at a red rag instead of rushing straight upon the alert toreador, who mocked their rage. In this disheartened mood I rang the bell. The door was opened, and the narrow court, the glass porch, the red carpet of the staircase, were before me. The concierge, who saluted me, was not he by whom I had fancied myself slighted in my childhood; but the old valet-de-chambre who opened the door to me was the same. His close-shaven face wore its former impassive expression, the look that used to convey to me such an impression of insult and insolence when I came home from school. What childish absurdity! To my question the man replied that my mother was in, also M. Termonde, and Madame Bernard, a friend of theirs. The latter name brought me back at once to the reality of the situation. Madame Bernard was a rather pretty woman, very slight and dark, with a tip-tilted nose, hair worn low upon her forehead, very white teeth which were continually shown by a constant smile, a short upper lip, and all the manners and ways of a woman of society well up in its latest gossip.