It was evident that Albertine had ceased to be a little girl when one day, to express her thanks for a present which a strange lady had given her, she had said: “I’m quite overcome.” Mme Bontemps had been unable to refrain from looking across at her husband, whose comment was: “Well, well, and she’s only fourteen.”

Her more pronounced nobility had struck home when Albertine, speaking of another girl whom she considered ill-bred, said: “One can’t even tell whether she’s pretty, because she paints her face a foot thick.” Finally, though still only a girl, she already displayed the manner of a grown woman of her upbringing and station when she said, of someone whose face twitched: “I can’t stand to look at him, because he makes me want to do the same,” or, if someone else were being imitated: “The absurd thing about it is that when you imitate her voice you look exactly like her.” All this is drawn from the social treasury.