He had told the truth, as a Clerk of the Court should.

He said that Jean Jacques' voice was not as he had so often heard it; but he would also frankly admit that he did not think madame played the song as he had heard her play it aforetime, and that covered indeed twelve years or more--in fact, since the birth of the renowned Zoe.
M.Fille had wondered much that night of June at the listless manner and listless playing of Carmen Barbille.

For a woman of such spirit and fire it would seem as though she must be in ill-health to play like that.
Yet when he looked at her he saw only the comeliness of a woman whom the life of the haut habitant had not destroyed or, indeed, dimmed.

Her skin was smooth, she had no wrinkles, and her neck was a pillar of softly moulded white flesh, around which a man might well string unset jewels, if he had them; for the tint and purity of her skin would be a better setting than platinum or fine gold.

But the Clerk of the Court was really unsophisticated, or he would have seen that Carmen played the guitar badly because she was not interested in Jean Jacques' singing.
He would have known that she had come to that stage in her married life when the tenure is pitifully insecure.