From time to time, especially after some exceptionally bad speculation, she confesses that what she fears most is to die in a pauper's bed.
A friend of M.Daburon's presented him one evening to the Marchioness d'Arlange, having dragged him to her house in a mirthful mood, saying, "Come with me, and I will show you a phenomenon, a ghost of the past in flesh and bone." The marchioness rather puzzled the magistrate the first time he was admitted to her presence.

On his second visit, she amused him very much; for which reason, he came again.

But after a while she no longer amused him, though he still continued a faithful and constant visitor to the rose-coloured boudoir wherein she passed the greater part of her life.
Madame d'Arlange conceived a violent friendship for him, and became eloquent in his praises.
"A most charming young man," she declared, "delicate and sensible! What a pity he is not born!" (Her ladyship meant born of noble parentage, but used the phrase as ignoring the fact of the unfortunates who are not noble having been born at all) "One can receive him though, all the same; his forefathers were very decent people, and his mother was a Cottevise who, however, went wrong.

I wish him well, and will do all I can to push him forward." The strongest proof of friendship he received from her was, that she condescended to pronounce his name like the rest of the world.

She had preserved that ridiculous affectation of forgetfulness of the names of people who were not of noble birth, and who in her opinion had no right to names.