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* I cite, in the interests of brevity, just a few examples, but I cannot resist mentioning how the more one reads this novel the greater is one’s admiration for the author’s skill in making the situations offer superb opportunities for comparison, and for the unselfconscious art with which he conceals this so that the situation is so perfectly placed in the context of its Part that the last thing you would think was that it was intended.
† There is the additional difference that in Part One it is the merchant, Waller, who wants his wife and niece to adorn themselves with the nationally symbolic gifts the Frenchmen have had sent to him, for which liberty the [Frenchmen] graciously apologize to the women at that festive evening; while here it is the commercial counsellor’s wife who has received a gift, and from a dandy who bought it because he was forced to and who gave it to the lady to get rid of it – and she wears it against her husband’s wishes, while Mariane sees with pain that little Colette imitates her mother and accepts gifts from some man in the street.