XII
Coming in toward evening, three days after his introduction to the family of Madame de Cintré, Newman found on his table the card of the Marquis de Bellegarde. On the following day he received a note informing him that this gentleman's mother requested the pleasure of his company at dinner. He went of course, though he had first to disengage himself from appeals that struck him as in comparison the babble of vain things. He was ushered into the room in which Madame de Bellegarde had received him before, and here he found his venerable hostess surrounded by her entire family. The room was lighted only by the crackling fire, which illumined the very small pink shoes of a lady who, from a low chair, stretched out her toes to it. This lady was the younger Madame de Bellegarde, always less effectively present, somehow, than perceptibly posted. Madame de Cintré, not posted at all, but oh so present, was seated at the other end of the room, holding a little girl against her knee, the child of her brother Urbain, to whom she was apparently relating a wonderful story. Valentin had perched on a puff close to his sister-in-law, into whose ear he was certainly distilling the finest nonsense. The Marquis was stationed before the chimney, his head erect and his hands behind him in an attitude of formal expectancy.
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