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* Even a character like Mrs Waller, Commercial Counsellor Waller’s consort, is only once made to appear comical in the book [p. 255, trans.], but to perfection, in that she embodies the kind of superficiality that consists in faithfully repeating anything at all, regardless of its aptness in context. Counsellor Dalund has accused our age of dalliance and said this is demonic. What happens? One day the lady surprises a young equerry (a friend of the family with whom she herself dallies) on the point of embracing and kissing a maid. The maid is dismissed and the equerry violently denounced, and it is here that the lines about dalliance and its being demonic are parodically inserted. What makes the comic construal even more superb is that the scene itself is not presented but reported by the little Colette, who repeats what old Dalund has said. The situation contains a wonderful irony at the extremely unfortunate choice of words, for in the event Dalund might well have been prepared to forgive the whole episode with the maid if it had gone unnoticed, while dallying is exactly what happens in the scene between Mrs Waller and the equerry, with whom she is coquettish. The satire implicit in a silly woman’s repeating an old man’s solemn words is excellent, as also is its casting light on Mrs Waller’s capacity for improvement.