For I am not sure whether his father is
in Paris. It's just the same with our friend Santerre; he's starting on a
tour to-morrow. Ah! not only do the dead leave us, but it is astonishing
what a number of the living go off and disappear! Life is very sad, is it
not, dear madame?"
As she spoke a little quiver passed over her face; the dread of the
coming rupture, which she had felt approaching for several months past,
amid all the skilful preparations of Santerre, who had been long maturing
some secret plan, which she did not as yet divine. However, she made a
devout ecstatic gesture, and added: "Well, we are in the hands of God."
Marianne, who was still smiling at the ever-motionless girls in the
closed brougham, changed the subject. "How tall they have grown, how
pretty they have become! Your Andree looks adorable. How old is your
Lucie now? She will soon be of an age to marry."
"Oh! don't let her hear you," retorted Valentine; "you would make her
burst into tears! She is seventeen, but for sense she isn't twelve. Would
you believe it, she began sobbing this morning and refusing to go to the
wedding, under the pretence that it would make her ill? She is always
talking of convents; we shall have to come to a decision about her.
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