Madame Rocher des Innouïs alone was allowed to break the hard and fast rule about blood relations, but then she was a law unto herself, nobody in Paris, not even Albertine, would think of giving a party without her. She sent for two little orphans from the Hospice des Innouïs. ‘After all,’ she said, ‘I am Tante Régine to everybody at the Hospice.’ Two ugly little boys arrived, one very fat and one very thin. After some thought she dressed them in deer-stalkers, white spats and beards as Edward VII and the Tsar of Russia, going herself as the Queen of Denmark, ‘Mother-in-law of Europe’. When they arrived Albertine murmured rather feebly, ‘I said aunts, not mothers-in-law,’ but of course she let them pass.
She was not so lenient, however, to Madame Novembre. Juliette had no possible excuse for being asked, except a niece, the daughter of her only sister who had married a Czech and gone to live in South Africa. This wretched spoil-sport refused to deliver up her child, even on the receipt of several long, explanatory telegrams from Juliette. It must be said that the probability of such a refusal had been taken into the fullest consideration by Albertine when making her plans.
Juliette now became perfectly frantic, and told her husband there was nothing for it, they must adopt a child. But at this the worm turned. Jean Novembre may not have been very bright in the head, but he was impregnated with a deep respect for his own family tree. Never, he said, would he bestow the great name of Novembre de la Ferté, not to speak of the proportion of his income which, by the laws of adoption, he would be obliged to settle, on some little gutter-snipe, simply in order to allow Juliette to go to a ball. He said it was unreasonable of her to expect such a thing; he also pointed out that she was the one who had consistently refused to have children of their own, which he wanted very much.
‘Everybody’s doing it,’ said Juliette.
‘The rastaquouères and Israelites may be, and who cares? Paris can easily support the presence of a few more Montezumas and Montelevis, it makes no difference to anybody. But Novembre de la Ferté is quite another matter. It’s entirely your own fault, Juliette. You have always mocked at Isabella de Tournon for having all those children – I tell you she’s a clever woman, and now you see who has come best out of the affair.’
Finally Juliette was reduced to borrowing her concierge’s child, a loathly specimen whom she hoped to pass off as the South African niece. Albertine was not deceived for a moment by this manoeuvre, and Madame Vigée Lebrun and her daughter entered the house only to make an ignominious exit. ‘Take that hideous child away this instant, Juliette. I know perfectly well who it is – I see it picking its nose every time I come into your courtyard. Off with you both and no argument. A rule is a rule; I refuse to make any exceptions.’
Very fortunately, three (really) famous (real) musicians, all excellent mimics, happened to be arriving at this moment. For weeks afterwards they re-enacted the scene, in high falsetto, at every Paris gathering. It became longer and more dramatic every time they did it, and was finally set to music and immortalized in the ballet ‘Novembre approche’.
A pair of young mothers now became the centre of interest. They had risen from their lying-in much sooner than the doctors would otherwise have allowed. (French doctors are always very good about recognizing the importance of social events, and certainly in this case had the patients been forbidden the ball they might easily have fretted themselves to death.) One came as the Duchesse de Berri with l’Enfant du Miracle,
