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Such homes had these various notabilities left behind them in the

fine world of Paris, that the spies among the assembled devotees

of Monseigneur--forming a goodly half of the polite

company--would have found it hard to discover among the angels of

that sphere one solitary wife, who, in her manners and

appearance, owned to being a Mother. Indeed, except for the mere

act of bringing a troublesome creature into this world--which

does not go far towards the realisation of the name of

mother--there was no such thing known to the fashion. Peasant

women kept the unfashionable babies close, and brought them up,

and charming grandmammas of sixty dressed and supped as at

twenty.