"Would you prefer that he should live in opposition to his name?" interposed Charlus. To him, too, Landri's marriage had been an over-bitter disappointment. "Upon my word!" he continued, "it's most astonishing to me that Claviers' conduct, judicious and wise and legitimate as it has been, should be criticized. And among ourselves! But everything is going the same way, from great to small. Dine out, no matter where: people to-day don't even know how to place their guests at table. Claviers set a superb example." "I agree with you," said Bressieux. "If we do not defend our names, what shall we defend?"--Then, with his characteristic dissembled irony: "Evidently Geoffroy is ruining the market. But don't be alarmed, Sicard. The title-exchange isn't in danger of being closed yet--even under the Republic, to adopt your expression." "All the same," said Elzéar de Travers, coming to the rescue of Simone's husband, "there's one pack of hounds less! And such a pack! How it was kept up!" "And what a table!" said Sicard. "For my part," said Simone, "I am for the lovers. If I had been in Monsieur de Claviers' place, I'd have scolded a little, on principle, and then I'd have given one of those parties that he knew how to give." "Look you, my dear," interposed Charlus angrily, "when I hear you and Jean talk like this, I wonder whether we oughtn't to long for another '93, to bring you all to a realizing sense of what you are and what you should be." "Oh!" laughed Madame de Sicard, "now you're just like my grandmother de Prosny, who used to prophesy the guillotine every night." "I know," Marie de Charlus broke in, "and you replied: 'You hope for the staircase of the nobles, but you'll get the wall.'--Wall or staircase, it's always blood that flows, and I agree with old Claviers, let us try to see to it that it's pure blood; and his grandchildren's won't be that. He did all he could to prevent it, and he did well. That's what I call _chic_ and not _chiqué_."