#p. 139

‘Laurette’s temper became more and more unbearable. This was her way of expressing unhappiness. Every second day she took to her bed. Seeing Aimée de Lagres again became an almost dangerous obsession. Muffled up in her ermine counterpane, steely-eyed, she performed quite a ritual of romantic mourning around this sorrow, which she had invented out of thin air and in which she ended up believing to the point of giving herself an attack of neurasthenia. Her choir of favorites suffered a thousand snubs and indignities; to the servants, she was a tyrant.’