--It would be
difficult, my dear," said she to Lisbeth, "to forget your adopted son
after once seeing him.--It is most kind of you, Monsieur Stidmann,"
she went on, "to have accepted my invitation at such short notice; but
necessity knows no law. I knew you to be the friend of both these
gentlemen. Nothing is more dreary, more sulky, than a dinner where all
the guests are strangers, so it was for their sake that I hailed you
in--but you will come another time for mine, I hope?--Say that you
will."
And for a few minutes she moved about the room with Stidmann, wholly
occupied with him.
Crevel and Hulot were announced separately, and then a deputy named
Beauvisage.
This individual, a provincial Crevel, one of the men created to make
up the crowd in the world, voted under the banner of Giraud, a State
Councillor, and Victorin Hulot. These two politicians were trying to
form a nucleus of progressives in the loose array of the Conservative
Party. Giraud himself occasionally spent the evening at Madame
Marneffe's, and she flattered herself that she should also capture
Victorin Hulot; but the puritanical lawyer had hitherto found excuses
for refusing to accompany his father and father-in-law.
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