They left the room, and I felt quite astonished at the way they greeted
each other. You can already understand the effect which my aunt must
have produced on me, and I was no less surprised at the new traits which
I discovered in my uncle's character. A complete revolution had been
effected. He became all at once very natty in his dress. His rough
straggling beard was trimmed in the Henri IVth style, and his moustaches
were twirled up at the ends. He left off swearing; his language and his
manners at once assumed the most correct tone, without constraint or
embarrassment, and with a modulation so natural, that it seemed really
to indicate a very long familiarity with fashionable practice. He had
not made a single slip. His frank gallantry had nothing artificial about
it; he was another man, and it was quite evident this was the only man
that Eudoxie de Cornalis had ever known him to be.
"Well! what do you think of your aunt?" he asked me as he came in after
five minutes' absence.
"She is charming, uncle, and as gracious as possible!"
"Did you expect to find her a monkey, then?" he exclaimed.
"Certainly not!" I replied. "But my aunt might have been beauty itself,
and still have lacked the character and the intellectual qualities which
I observe in her."
"Oh, you can't at all judge of her yet!" continued he, in a careless
tone. "You'll see what I mean later on. She's a real woman!"
My aunt did not come down again until luncheon-time. Her appearance
created quite an atmosphere of cheerful society in the dining-room,
usually occupied only by my uncle and his nephew. My uncle was no doubt
conscious of the same impression, for leaning towards me, he said to me
in his inimitably cool manner, and in a low voice, "Don't you see how everything brightens up already?"
My aunt sat down, and as she took off her gloves, cast her eyes over the
table, the sideboards, the servants in waiting, and the general
arrangements of the dining-room.
"François," she said to my uncle's old man-servant, "please send the
gardener to me at four o'clock."
"Yes, Madame la Comtesse."
"And then send the steward, whom I do not see here."
"Oh, I am the steward!" replied my uncle.
"That's capital! My compliments to you," she continued; "I might have
known it."
"All the same, I fancy I perform my duties very well: is not this new
furniture to your taste?"