Her
toilet kept her till close on five o'clock, and then only she would wake
from her daylong drowse and drive out or receive a whole mob of men at
her own house. She would often dine abroad and always go to bed very
late, only to rise again on the morrow with the same languor as before
and to begin another day, differing in nothing from its predecessor.
The great distraction was to go to the Batignolles and see her little
Louis at her aunt's. For a fortnight at a time she forgot all about him,
and then would follow an access of maternal love, and she would hurry
off on foot with all the modesty and tenderness becoming a good mother.
On such occasions she would be the bearer of snuff for her aunt and of
oranges and biscuits for the child, the kind of presents one takes to a
hospital. Or again she would drive up in her landau on her return from
the Bois, decked in costumes, the resplendence of which greatly excited
the dwellers in the solitary street. Since her niece's magnificent
elevation Mme Lerat had been puffed up with vanity. She rarely presented
herself in the Avenue de Villiers, for she was pleased to remark that it
wasn't her place to do so, but she enjoyed triumphs in her own street.
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