Mercédès had changed dramatically in recent days. It wasn't that she'd ever dressed in the magnificent, ostentatious style that makes a woman unrecognizable when she appears in simple clothes. Nor had she fallen into the kind of depression where poverty is impossible to hide.
No, the change in Mercédès was different. Her eyes no longer sparkled. Her lips no longer smiled. The quick, clever words that used to flow so easily from her now came slowly, with hesitation.
It wasn't poverty that had broken her spirit, it wasn't a lack of courage that made her poverty unbearable. Though she'd fallen from her high position, lost in this new sphere she'd chosen, Mercédès was like someone passing from a brilliantly lit room into complete darkness. She seemed like a queen who'd fallen from her palace into a cottage, reduced to such strict necessity that she couldn't reconcile herself to the cheap dishes she was forced to use or the humble bed where she now slept.
