The picture was so true, although its satire wounded no one present, that laughter ran around the table.
The Duchess, shaken by the suppressed merriment of fat persons, relieved herself by discreet chuckles.
“Really, you are too funny!” she said at last; “you will make me die of laughter.”
“Oh, Madame, in the polite world one does not die of laughter! One hardly laughs, even. We have sufficient amiability, as a matter of good taste, to pretend to be amused and appear to laugh. The grimace is imitated well enough, but the real thing is never done. Go to the theaters of the common people--there you will see laughter. Go among the _bourgeoisie_, when they are amusing themselves; you will see them laugh to suffocation. Go to the soldiers' quarters, you will see men choking, their eyes full of tears, doubled up on their beds over the jokes of some funny fellow. But in our drawing-rooms we never laugh. I tell you that we simulate everything, even laughter.”
“Permit me to say that you are very severe. It seems to me that you yourself, my dear fellow, do not wholly despise this society at which you rail so bitterly.”
“I despise myself a little, as a mongrel of doubtful race.”
“All that sort of talk is nothing but a pose,” said the Duchess.
And, as he denied having any intention of posing, she cut short the discussion by declaring that all artists try to make people believe that chalk is cheese.
The conversation then became general, touching upon everything, ordinary and pleasant, friendly and critical, and, as the dinner was drawing toward its end, the Countess suddenly exclaimed, pointing to the full glasses of wine that were ranged before her plate:
“Well, you see that I have drunk nothing, nothing, not a drop! We shall see whether I shall not grow thin!”
The Duchess, furious, tried to make her swallow some mineral water, but in vain; then she exclaimed:
“Oh, the little simpleton! That daughter of hers will turn her head. I beg of you, Guilleroy, prevent your wife from committing this folly.”
The Count, who was explaining to Musadieu the system of a threshing-machine invented in America, had not been listening.
The Count looked at his wife with an expression of kindly indifference.