He proceeded to describe graphically, as he knew well how to do, the Bois in the morning hours with its gay cavaliers and fair Amazons, that club where everyone knows everyone else by their Christian names, their pet names, their family connections, titles, qualities, and vices, as if they all lived in the same neighborhood or in the same small town.
“Do you come here often at that hour?” Annette inquired.
“Very often; there is no more charming place in Paris.”
“Do you come on horseback in the mornings?”
“Oh, I work--sometimes; and besides, you see, I have chosen a special entertainment suited to my tastes. As I paint the portraits of beautiful women, it is necessary that I should see them and follow them everywhere.”
“On foot and on horseback!” murmured Annette, with a perfectly serious face.
He threw her a sidelong glance of appreciation, which seemed to say: “Ah! you are witty, even now! You will do very well.”
A breath of cold air from far away, from the country that was hardly awake as yet, swept over the park, and the whole Bois, coquettish, frivolous, and fashionable, shivered under its chill. For some seconds it caused the tender leaves to tremble on the trees, and garments on shoulders. All the women, with a movement almost simultaneous, drew up over their arms and chests their wraps lying behind them; and the horses began to trot, from one end of the avenue to the other, as if the keen wind had flicked them like a whip.
The Countess's party returned quickly, to the silvery jingle of the harness, under the slanting red rays of the setting sun.
“Shall you go home?” inquired the Countess of Bertin, with whose habits she was familiar.
“Then, shall we set you down there in passing?”
“Thank you, that will be very convenient.”
“And when shall you invite us to breakfast with the Duchess?”
This painter in ordinary to the fair Parisians, whom his admirers christened “a Watteau realist” and his detractors a “photographer of gowns and mantles,” often received at breakfast or at dinner the beautiful persons whose feature he had reproduced, as well as the celebrated and the well known, who found very amusing these little entertainments in a bachelor's establishment.
“The day after to-morrow, then. Will the day after to-morrow suit you, my dear Duchess?” asked Madame de Guilleroy.