The Cake

Let us say that her name was Madame Anserre so as not to reveal her real
name.

She was one of those Parisian comets which leave, as it were, a trail of
fire behind them. She wrote verses and novels; she had a poetic heart,
and was rarely beautiful. She opened her doors to very few--only to
exceptional people, those who are commonly described as princes of
something or other. To be a visitor at her house constituted a claim, a
genuine claim to intellect: at least this was the estimate set on her
invitations. Her husband played the part of an obscure satellite. To be
the husband of a comet is not an easy thing. This husband had, however,
an original idea, that of creating a State within a State, of possessing
a merit of his own, a merit of the second order, it is true; but he did,
in fact, in this fashion, on the days when his wife held receptions,
hold receptions also on his own account. He had his special set who
appreciated him, listened to him, and bestowed on him more attention
than they did on his brilliant partner.

He had devoted himself to agriculture--to agriculture in the Chamber.
There are in the same way generals in the Chamber--those who are born,
who live, and who die, on the round leather chairs of the War Office,
are all of this sort, are they not? Sailors in the Chamber,--viz., in
the Admiralty,--colonizers in the Chamber, etc., etc. So he had studied
agriculture, had studied it deeply, indeed, in its relations to the
other sciences, to political economy, to the Fine Arts--we dress up the
Fine Arts with every kind of science, and we even call the horrible
railway bridges "works of art." At length he reached the point when it
was said of him: "He is a man of ability." He was quoted in the
technical reviews; his wife had succeeded in getting him appointed a
member of a committee at the Ministry of Agriculture.

This latest glory was quite sufficient for him.

Under the pretext of diminishing the expenses, he sent out invitations
to his friends for the day when his wife received hers, so that they
associated together, or rather did not--they formed two distinct groups.
Madame, with her escort of artists, academicians, and ministers,
occupied a kind of gallery, furnished and decorated in the style of the
Empire. Monsieur generally withdrew with his agriculturists into a
smaller portion of the house used as a smoking-room and ironically
described by Madame Anserre as the Salon of Agriculture.

The two camps were clearly separate. Monsieur, without jealousy,
moreover, sometimes penetrated into the Academy, and cordial
hand-shakings were exchanged; but the Academy entertained infinite
contempt for the Salon of Agriculture, and it was rarely that one of the