Mathilde felt herself seized by an irresistible attack of yawning. She knew so well the old gildings and the old habitués of her father's salon. She conjured up an absolutely boring picture of the life which she was going to take up at Paris, and yet, when at Hyerès, she had regretted Paris.
"And yet I am nineteen," she thought. "That's the age of happiness, say all those gilt-edged ninnies."
She looked at eight or ten new volumes of poetry which had accumulated on the table in the salon during her journey in Provence. She had the misfortune to have more brains than M.M. de Croisnois, de Caylus, de Luz, and her other friends. She anticipated all that they were going to tell her about the fine sky of Provence, poetry, the South, etc., etc.
These fine eyes, which were the home of the deepest ennui, and worse still, of the despair of ever finding pleasure, lingered on Julien. At any rate, he was not exactly like the others.
"Monsieur Sorel," she said, in that short, sharp voice, destitute of all femininity, which is so frequent among young women of the upper class.
"Monsieur Sorel, are you coming to-night to M. de Retz's ball?"
"Mademoiselle, I have not had the honour of being presented to M. the duke." (One would have said that these words and that title seared the mouth of the proud provincial).
"He asked my brother to take you there, and if you go, you could tell me some details about the Villequier estate. We are thinking of going there in the spring, and I would like to know if the château is habitable, and if the neighbouring places are as pretty as they say. There are so many unmerited reputations."
Julien did not answer.
"Come to the ball with my brother," she added, very dryly.
Julien bowed respectfully.
"So I owe my due to the members of the family, even in the middle of a ball. Am I not paid to be their business man?" His bad temper added, "God knows, moreover, if what I tell the daughter will not put out the plans of the father, brother, and mother. It is just like the court of a sovereign prince. You have to be absolutely negative, and yet give no one any right to complain."
"How that big girl displeases me!" he thought, as he
