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MODERN TIMES.
MADAME CERES "Only extreme things are tolerable." Count Robert de Montesquiou.
I.MADAME CLARENCE'S DRAWING-ROOM Madame Clarence, the widow of an exalted functionary of the Republic, loved to entertain.

Every Thursday she collected together some friends of modest condition who took pleasure in conversation.

The ladies who went to see her, very different in age and rank, were all without money, and had all suffered much.

There was a duchess who looked like a fortune-teller and a fortune-teller who looked like a duchess.