Young, beautiful, and irreproachable, she charmed alike society and the masses by her combination of elegant costumes and pleasant smiles.
Her receptions were thronged by the great Jewish financiers.

She gave the most fashionable garden parties in the Republic.

The newspapers described her dresses and the milliners did not ask her to pay for them.
She went to Mass; she protected the chapel of St.Orberosia from the ill-will of the people; and she aroused in aristocratic hearts the hope of a fresh Concordat.
With her golden hair, grey eyes, and supple and slight though rounded figure, she was indeed pretty.

She enjoyed an excellent reputation and she was so adroit, and calm, so much mistress of herself, that she would have preserved it intact even if she had been discovered in the very act of ruining it.
The session ended with a victory for the cabinet which, amid the almost unanimous applause of the House, defeated a proposal for an inquisitorial tax, and with a triumph for Madame Ceres who gave parties in honour of three kings who were at the moment passing through Alca.
VI.

THE SOFA OF THE FAVOURITE The Prime Minister invited Monsieur and Madame Ceres to spend a couple of weeks of the holidays in a little villa that he had taken in the mountains, and in which he lived alone.