"Casimir inherited his apartment from his parents," Vaudreuil explained as they approached a drab building in a drab street lined with third rate shops. "His father was an upholsterer with the soul of an upholsterer and the manner of a president of the Senate; Casimir has the soul of a pagan saint and the manner of a wholesale wine merchant. Vous allez voir."
They mounted to the second floor and were received by Mme. Casimir in a large salon which overlooked the court in the rear. Across the court could be seen the high windows of a room which Casimir, many years before, had converted into an atelier.
Mercy, how dreadful! was Grover's first inward exclamation, on surveying the gilded legs of Mme. Casimir's stiff chairs and the large pink and yellow roses in her carpet. Nothing could be less like the salon 'of the wife of a painter who, next to Cézanne, etc., indeed nothing could be more like the salon of the ambitious daughter-in-law of an upholsterer in a small way of business in a poor section of the city. There were photographs in beribboned frames, including one of Mme. Casimir herself as a little girl in her confirmation dress. There were China shepherdesses and plush portières with tassels. There wasn't an object in the room that couldn't have been bought at Dufayel's; not an object that wasn't trying its best to look grand.
Mme. Casimir herself looked far more like the woman who did her own marketing than the woman
