She had been brought up amongst the old nobles of the emigration, in some very ancient and very gilded apartment, just as though she had been in a cabinet of curiosities.

Her mind had awakened amid the hum of antediluvian conversations, her imagination had first been aroused by arguments a little less profitable than those of an assembly of deaf persons convoked to decide upon the merits of the work of some distinguished musician.

Here she imbibed a fund of ideas, which, applied to the forms of society of to-day, are as grotesque as would be those of a child shut up until twenty years of age in an Assyrian museum.
The first empire, the restoration, the monarchy of July, the second republic, the second empire, have passed beneath her windows, but she has not taken the trouble to open them.

All that has happened since '89 she considers as never having been.

For her it is a nightmare from which she is still awaiting a release.