The Marquis de Chouard had just come in, and everyone was anxious to greet him.

He had moved painfully forward, his legs failing under him, and he now stood in the middle of the room with pallid face and eyes blinking, as though he had just come out of some dark alley and were blinded by the brightness of the lamps.
"I scarcely hoped to see you tonight, Father," said the countess.

"I should have been anxious till the morning." He looked at her without answering, as a man might who fails to understand.

His nose, which loomed immense on his shorn face, looked like a swollen pimple, while his lower lip hung down.

Seeing him such a wreck, Mme Hugon, full of kind compassion, said pitying things to him.
"You work too hard.