Page:Tales of Today.djvu/156

140 three years you were an unimpeachable comtesse. The comte, who was tired to death of the museums and had never been able to make much of the old masters, now gave up entirely and brought you back to Paris. The shutters of the old hôtel that had been closed so long flew back against the wall with a bang, and you ate your first home-coming dinner in the vast dining-room, seated opposite the big portrait of the comte's great-grandfather, who had been lieutenant-general of the king's armies; a stately old gentleman with powdered hair he was, wearing the cordon-bleu across his red coat, and particularly remarkable by reason of the immense nose that runs in the family, and he seemed to look down on you from his lofty position with somewhat of severity.

And here, again, comtesse, solitude and melancholy were your lot. What labor, and expenditure of money in charitable works, it cost your husband merely to create for you a small society of priests and priestesses! How lugubrious, those black robes of either sex! For the last six years you have been spending all your mornings in visiting schools and nurseries, and at night you shiver in your solitary box at the Français or the Opera. No child, and no hope of ever having one. The years are fleeting! And, what is worst of all, your only feelings toward the comte are those of deep gratitude and sincere friendship, and you have your opinion concerning him. Oh! a perfect gentleman in every way; no doubt of that, but chokeful of stupid, aristocratic prejudices, and as tiresome as a concert. He is forty-eight, now, and quite a type of the old beau turned milksop; isn't that so? a sufficiently vapid mixture of