And when the dawn made the candles on the table look pale, the son rose from his armchair, and without even a parting glance at the mother whom he had separated from them and condemned, he said slowly: "Now, my sister, let us leave the room." THE CAKE Let us say that her name was Madame Anserre so as not to reveal her real name. She was one of those Parisian comets which leave, as it were, a trail of fire behind them. She wrote verses and novels; she had a poetic heart, and was ravishingly beautiful. She opened her doors to very few--only to exceptional people, those who are commonly described as princes of something or other. To be a visitor at her house constituted a claim, a genuine claim of intellect: at least this was the estimate set on her invitations. Her husband played the part of an obscure satellite. To be the husband of a star is not an easy thing. This husband had, however, an original idea, that of creating a State within a State, of possessing a merit of his own, a merit of the second order; it is true; but he did, in fact, in this fashion, on the days when his wife held receptions, hold receptions also on his own account. He had his special set who appreciated him, listened to him, and bestowed on him more attention than they did on his brilliant partner. He had devoted himself to agriculture--to agriculture in the Chamber. There are in the same way generals in the Chamber--those who are born, who live, and who die, on the round leather chairs of the War Office, are all of this sort, are they not? Sailors in the Chambers--viz., in the Admiralty--Colonizers in the Chamber, etc., etc. So he had studied agriculture, indeed he had studied it deeply, in its relations with the other sciences, with political economy, with the Fine Arts--we dress up the Fine Arts with every kind of science, since we even call the horrible railway bridges "works of art." At length he reached the point when it was said of him: "He is a man of ability." He was quoted in the Technical Reviews; his wife had succeeded in getting him appointed a member of a committee at the Ministry of Agriculture. This latest glory was quite sufficient for him. Under the pretext of diminishing the expenses, he sent out invitations to his friends for the day when his wife received hers, so that they associated together, or rather they did not--they formed two groups. Madame, with her escort of artists, academicians, and Ministers, occupied a kind of gallery, furnished and decorated in the style of the Empire. Monsieur generally withdrew with his agriculturists into a smaller portion of the house used as a smoking-room and ironically described by Madame Anserre as the Salon of Agriculture.