Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/173

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At that moment, Madame de Portenduère, alone with the curé in her cold little parlor on the ground floor, had just finished confiding her troubles to this good priest, her only friend. In her hand she held the letters that the Abbé Chaperon had just returned to her after having read them, and which had completed the measure of her worries. Sitting in her easy-chair on one side of the square table covered with the remains of dessert, the old lady looked at the curé, who, on the other side, huddled in his armchair, was stroking his chin with the gesture common to theatrical valets, mathematicians and priests, and which betrays some reflection over a difficult problem.

This little parlor, lighted by two windows facing the road and wainscoted with gray painted woodwork, was so damp, that the lower panels showed the geometrical cracks of rotten wood when it is no longer preserved but by paint. The tiled floor, red and rubbed by the old lady’s only servant, required little rounds of matting in front of each seat, upon one of which the abbé was keeping his feet. The curtains, of old, light-green damask with green flowers, were drawn, and the outer blinds had been shut. Two candles lit up the table, leaving the room in shadow. Is it necessary to say that between the two windows was a fine pastel by Latour of the 147