Consequently, every Friday,--the day of her dinner parties,--Madame Rabourdin helped the chambermaid to do the rooms; for the cook went early to market, and the man-servant was cleaning the silver, folding the napkins, and polishing the glasses.
The ill-advised individual who might happen, through an oversight of the porter, to enter Madame Rabourdin's establishment about eleven o'clock in the morning would have found her in the midst of a disorder the reverse of picturesque, wrapped in a dressing-gown, her hair ill-dressed, and her feet in old slippers, attending to the lamps, arranging the flowers, or cooking in haste an extremely unpoetic breakfast.

The visitor to whom the mysteries of Parisian life were unknown would certainly have learned for the rest of his life not to set foot in these greenrooms at the wrong moment; a woman caught in her matin mysteries would ever after point him out as a man capable of the blackest crimes; or she would talk of his stupidity and indiscretion in a manner to ruin him.

The true Parisian woman, indulgent to all curiosity that she can put to profit, is implacable to that which makes her lose her prestige.

Such a domiciliary invasion may be called, not only (as they say in police reports) an attack on privacy, but a burglary, a robbery of all that is most precious, namely, CREDIT.

A woman is quite willing to let herself be surprised half-dressed, with her hair about her shoulders.