I ceased to take part in the conversation when it turned upon the theatre, for on that topic Rachel was too malicious for my liking. She did, it was true, take up in a tone of commiseration⁠—against Saint-Loup, which proved that he was accustomed to hearing Rachel attack her⁠—the defence of Berma, saying: “Oh, no, she’s a wonderful person, really. Of course, the things she does no longer appeal to us, they don’t correspond quite to what we are looking for, but one must think of her at the period to which she belongs; we owe her a great deal. She has done good work, you know. And besides she’s such a fine woman, she has such a good heart; naturally she doesn’t care about the things that interest us, but she has had in her time, with a rather impressive face, a charming quality of mind.” (Our fingers, by the way, do not play the same accompaniment to all our aesthetic judgments. If it is a picture that is under discussion, to show that it is a fine work with plenty of paint, it is enough to stick out one’s thumb. But the “charming quality of mind” is more exacting.