"Rest easy," declared the caterer.
"I know so well how to disguise things that I defy anybody to know what he is eating.
It is a specialty of the house."
At last the great day arrived.
Monsieur rose early,—anxious, nervous, agitated.
Madame, who had been unable to sleep all night, and weary from the errands of the day before and the preparations of all sorts, could not keep still.
Five or six times, with wrinkled brow, out of breath, trembling and so weary that, as she said, she felt her belly in her heels, she made a final examination of the house, upset and rearranged bric-a-brac and furniture without reason, and went from one room to another without knowing why and as if she were mad.
She trembled lest the cooks might not come, lest the florist might fail them, and lest the guests might not be placed at table in accordance with strict etiquette.
Monsieur followed her everywhere, clad only in pink silk drawers, approving here, criticising there.
"Now that I think about it again," said he, "what a queer idea that was of yours to order centauries for the table decoration!
I assure you that blue becomes black in the light.
And then, after all, centauries are nothing but simple corn-flowers.
It will look as if we had been to the fields to gather corn-flowers."
"Oh! corn-flowers! how provoking you are!"
"Yes, indeed, corn-flowers.
And the corn-flower, as Kimberly said very truly the other evening at the Rothschilds, is not a society flower.
Why not also corn poppies?"
"Let me alone," answered Madame. "You drive me crazy with all your stupid observations.
A nice time to offer them, indeed!"
But Monsieur was obstinate:
"All right, all right; you will see, you will see. Provided, my God, that everything goes off tolerably well, without too many accidents, without too many delays.
I did not know that to be society people was so difficult, so fatiguing, and so complicated a matter.
Perhaps we ought to have remained simple boors."
And Madame growled:
"Oh! for that matter, I see clearly that nothing will change you. You scarcely do honor to a woman."
As they thought me pretty, and very elegant to look at, my masters had allotted to me also an important role in this comedy.
First I was to preside over the cloak-room, and then to aid, or rather superintend, the four butlers, four tall lascars, with immense side-whiskers, selected from several employment-bureaus to serve this extraordinary dinner.
At first all went well.
Nevertheless, there was a moment of alarm. At quarter before nine the Countess Fergus had not yet arrived.
Suppose she had changed her mind, and resolved at the last moment not to come?
What a humiliation! What a disaster!
The Charrigauds were in a state of consternation.
Joseph Brigard reassured them.
It was the day when the countess had to preside over her admirable
"Society for the Collection of Cigar-Stumps for the Army and Navy."
The sessions sometimes did not end till very late.
"What a charming woman!" said Mme. Charrigaud, ecstatically, as if this eulogy had the magic power to hasten the coming of "this dirty countess," whom, at the bottom of her soul, she cursed.
"And what a brain!" said Charrigaud, going her one better, though really entertaining the same feeling.
"The other day at the Rothschilds I felt that it would be necessary to go back to the last century to find such perfect grace and such superiority."
"And even then!" said Joseph Brigard, capping the climax. "You see, my dear Monsieur Charrigaud, in democratic societies based upon equality...."
He was about to deliver one of those semi-gallant, semi-sociological discourses which he was fond of retailing in the salons, when the Countess Fergus entered, imposing and majestic, in a black gown embroidered with jet and steel that showed off the fat whiteness and soft beauty of her shoulders.
And it was amid murmurs and whispers of admiration that they made their way ceremoniously to the dining-room.
The beginning of the dinner was rather cold.
In spite of her success, perhaps even because of her success, the Countess Fergus was a little haughty, or, at least, too reserved.
She seemed to wear an air of condescension at having honored with her presence the humble house of "these little people."
Charrigaud thought he noticed that she examined with a discreetly but visibly contemptuous pout the rented silverware, the table decoration, Mme.
Charrigaud's green costume, and the four butlers whose too long side-whiskers dipped into the dishes.
He was filled with vague terrors and agonizing doubts as to the proper appearance of his table and his wife.
It was a horrible minute!
After some commonplace and laborious replies, exchanged apropos of trivial topics then current, the conversation gradually became general, and finally settled down upon the subject of correctness in society life.