The apartments should be light and brilliant and lofty; he had once said that he liked rooms in which you wanted to keep your hat on.

For the rest, he was satisfied with the assurance of any respectable person that everything was "handsome." Tristram accordingly secured for him an apartment to which this epithet might be lavishly applied.

It was situated on the Boulevard Haussmann, on the first floor, and consisted of a series of rooms, gilded from floor to ceiling a foot thick, draped in various light shades of satin, and chiefly furnished with mirrors and clocks.

Newman thought them magnificent, thanked Tristram heartily, immediately took possession, and had one of his trunks standing for three months in his drawing-room.
One day Mrs.Tristram told him that her beautiful friend, Madame de Cintre, had returned from the country; that she had met her three days before, coming out of the Church of St.Sulpice; she herself having journeyed to that distant quarter in quest of an obscure lace-mender, of whose skill she had heard high praise.
"And how were those eyes ?" Newman asked.
"Those eyes were red with weeping, if you please!" said Mrs.Tristram.
"She had been to confession." "It doesn't tally with your account of her," said Newman, "that she should have sins to confess." "They were not sins; they were sufferings." "How do you know that ?" "She asked me to come and see her; I went this morning." "And what does she suffer from ?" "I didn't ask her.

With her, somehow, one is very discreet.