Madame de Maisonrouge belongs to one of
the oldest and proudest families in France; but she has had reverses
which have compelled her to open an establishment in which a limited
number of travellers, who are weary of the beaten track, who have the
sense of local colour--she explains it herself; she expresses it so
well--in short, to open a sort of boarding-house. I don't see why I
should not, after all, use that expression, for it is the correlative of
the term _pension bourgeoise_, employed by Balzac in the _Pere Goriot_.
Do you remember the _pension bourgeoise_ of Madame Vauquer _nee_ de
Conflans? But this establishment is not at all like that: and indeed it
is not at all _bourgeois_; there is something distinguished, something
aristocratic, about it. The Pension Vauquer was dark, brown, sordid,
_graisseuse_; but this is in quite a different tone, with high, clear,
lightly-draped windows, tender, subtle, almost morbid, colours, and
furniture in elegant, studied, reed-like lines. Madame de Maisonrouge
reminds me of Madame Hulot--do you remember "la belle Madame Hulot?"--in
_Les Barents Pauvres_.
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