Генри Джеймс
The American
“You ought to show more of your shoulders behind,” he said very gravely. “You might as well wear a standing ruff as such a dress as that.”
The young woman turned her back to the mirror over the chimney-piece, and glanced behind her, to verify Valentin’s assertion. The mirror descended low, and yet it reflected nothing but a large unclad flesh surface. The young marquise put her hands behind her and gave a downward pull to the waist of her dress. “Like that, you mean?” she asked.
“That is a little better,” said Bellegarde in the same tone, “but it leaves a good deal to be desired.”
“Oh, I never go to extremes,” said his sister-in-law. And then, turning to Madame de Bellegarde, “What were you calling me just now, madame?”
“I called you a gad-about,” said the old lady. “But I might call you something else, too.”
“A gad-about? What an ugly word! What does it mean?”
“A very beautiful person,” Newman ventured to say, seeing that it was in French.
“That is a pretty compliment but a bad translation,” said the young marquise. And then, looking at him a moment, “Do you dance?”
“Not a step.”
“You are very wrong,” she said, simply. And with another look at her back in the mirror she turned away.
“Do you like Paris?” asked the old lady, who was apparently wondering what was the proper way to talk to an American.
“Yes, rather,” said Newman. And then he added with a friendly intonation, “Don’t you?”
“I can’t say I know it. I know my house—I know my friends—I don’t know Paris.”
“Oh, you lose a great deal,” said Newman, sympathetically.
Madame de Bellegarde stared; it was presumably the first time she had been condoled with on her losses.
“I am content with what I have,” she said with dignity.
Newman’s eyes, at this moment, were wandering round the room, which struck him as rather sad and shabby; passing from the high casements, with their small, thickly-framed panes, to the sallow tints of two or three portraits in pastel, of the last century, which hung between them. He ought, obviously, to have answered that the contentment of his hostess was quite natural—she had a great deal; but the idea did not occur to him during the pause of some moments which followed.
“Well, my dear mother,” said Valentin, coming and leaning against the chimney-piece, “what do you think of my dear friend Newman? Is he not the excellent fellow I told you?”
“My acquaintance with Mr. Newman has not gone very far,” said Madame de Bellegarde. “I can as yet only appreciate his great politeness.”
“My mother is a great judge of these matters,” said Valentin to Newman. “If you have satisfied her, it is a triumph.”
“I hope I shall satisfy you, some day,” said Newman, looking at the old lady. “I have done nothing yet.”
“You must not listen to my son; he will bring you into trouble. He is a sad scatterbrain.”
“Oh, I like him—I like him,” said Newman, genially.
“He amuses you, eh?”
“Yes, perfectly.”
“Do you hear that, Valentin?” said Madame de Bellegarde. “You amuse Mr. Newman.”
“Perhaps we shall all come to that!” Valentin exclaimed.
“You must see my other son,” said Madame de Bellegarde. “He is much better than this one. But he will not amuse you.”
“I don’t know—I don’t know!” murmured Valentin, reflectively. “But we shall very soon see. Here comes Monsieur mon frère.”
The door had just opened to give ingress to a gentleman who stepped forward and whose face Newman remembered. He had been the author of our hero’s discomfiture the first time he tried to present himself to Madame de Cintré. Valentin de Bellegarde went to meet his brother, looked at him a moment, and then, taking him by the arm, led him up to Newman.
“This is my excellent friend Mr. Newman,” he said very blandly. “You must know him.”
“I am delighted to know Mr. Newman,” said the marquis with a low bow, but without offering his hand.
“He is the old woman at second-hand,” Newman said to himself, as he returned M. de Bellegarde’s greeting. And this was the starting-point of a speculative theory, in his mind, that the late marquis had been a very amiable foreigner, with an inclination to take life easily and a sense that it was difficult for the husband of the stilted little lady by the fire to do so. But if he had taken little comfort in his wife he had taken much in his two younger children, who were after his own heart, while Madame de Bellegarde had paired with her eldest-born.
“My brother has spoken to me of you,” said M. de Bellegarde; “and as you are also acquainted with my sister, it was time we should meet.” He turned to his mother and gallantly bent over her hand, touching it with his lips, and then he assumed an attitude before the chimney-piece. With his long, lean face, his high-bridged nose and his small, opaque eye he looked much like an Englishman. His whiskers were fair and glossy, and he had a large dimple, of unmistakably British origin, in the middle of his handsome chin. He was “distinguished” to the tips of his polished nails, and there was not a movement of his fine, perpendicular person that was not noble and majestic. Newman had never yet been confronted with such an incarnation of the art of taking one’s self seriously; he felt a sort of impulse to step backward, as you do to get a view of a great façade.
“Urbain,” said young Madame de Bellegarde, who had apparently been waiting for her husband to take her to her ball, “I call your attention to the fact that I am dressed.”
“That is a good idea,” murmured Valentin.
“I am at your orders, my dear friend,” said M. de Bellegarde. “Only, you must allow me first the pleasure of a little conversation with Mr. Newman.”
“Oh, if you are going to a party, don’t let me keep you,” objected Newman. “I am very sure we shall meet again. Indeed, if you would like to converse with me I will gladly name an hour.” He was eager to make it known that he would readily answer all questions and satisfy all exactions.
M. de Bellegarde stood in a well-balanced position before the fire, caressing one of his fair whiskers with one of his white hands, and looking at Newman, half askance, with eyes from which a particular ray of observation made its way through a general meaningless smile. “It is very kind of you to make such an offer,” he said. “If I am not mistaken, your occupations are such as to make your time precious. You are in—a—as we say, dans les affaires.”
“In business, you mean? Oh no, I have thrown business overboard for the present. I am ‘loafing,’ as we say. My time is quite my own.”
“Ah, you are taking a holiday,” rejoined M. de Bellegarde. “‘Loafing.’ Yes, I have heard that expression.”
“Mr. Newman is American,” said Madame de Bellegarde.
“My brother is a great ethnologist,” said Valentin.
“An ethnologist?” said Newman. “Ah, you collect negroes’ skulls, and that sort of thing.”
The marquis looked hard at his brother, and began to caress his other whisker. Then, turning to Newman, with sustained urbanity, “You are traveling for your pleasure?” he asked.’
“Oh, I am knocking about to pick up one thing and another. Of course I get a good deal of pleasure out of it.”
“What especially interests you?” inquired the marquis.
“Well, everything interests me,” said Newman. “I am not particular. Manufactures are what I care most about.”
“That has been your specialty?”
“I can’t say I have any specialty. My specialty has been to make the largest possible fortune in the shortest possible time.” Newman made this last remark very deliberately; he wished to open the way, if it were necessary, to an authoritative statement of his means.
M. de Bellegarde laughed agreeably. “I hope you have succeeded,” he said.
“Yes, I have made a fortune in a reasonable time. I am not so old, you see.”
“Paris is a very good place to spend a fortune. I wish you great enjoyment of yours.” And M. de Bellegarde drew forth his gloves and began to put them on.
Newman for a few moments watched him sliding his white hands into the white kid, and as he did so his feelings took a singular turn. M. de Bellegarde’s good wishes seemed to descend out of the white expanse of his sublime serenity with the soft, scattered movement of a shower of snow-flakes. Yet Newman was not irritated; he did not feel that he was being patronized; he was conscious of no especial impulse to introduce a discord into so noble a harmony. Only he felt himself suddenly in personal contact with the forces with which his friend Valentin had told him that he would have to contend, and he became sensible of their intensity. He wished to make some answering manifestation, to stretch himself out at his own length, to sound a note at the uttermost end of his scale. It must be added that if this impulse was not vicious or malicious, it was by no means void of humorous expectancy. Newman was quite as ready to give play to that loosely-adjusted smile of his, if his hosts should happen to be shocked, as he was far from deliberately planning to shock them.
“Paris is a very good place for idle people,” he said, “or it is a very good place if your family has been settled here for a long time, and you have made acquaintances and got your relations round you; or if you have got a good big house like this, and a wife and children and mother and sister, and everything comfortable. I don’t like that way of living all in rooms next door to each other. But I am not an idler. I try to be, but I can’t manage it; it goes against the grain. My business habits are too deep-seated. Then, I haven’t any house to call my own, or anything in the way of a family. My sisters are five thousand miles away, my mother died when I was a youngster, and I haven’t any wife; I wish I had! So, you see, I don’t exactly know what to do with myself. I am not fond of books, as you are, sir, and I get tired of dining out and going to the opera. I miss my business activity. You see, I began to earn my living when I was almost a baby, and until a few months ago I have never had my hand off the plow. Elegant leisure comes hard.”
This speech was followed by a profound silence of some moments, on the part of Newman’s entertainers. Valentin stood looking at him fixedly, with his hands in his pockets, and then he slowly, with a half-sidling motion, went out of the door. The marquis continued to draw on his gloves and to smile benignantly.
“You began to earn your living when you were a mere baby?” said the marquise.
“Hardly more—a small boy.”
“You say you are not fond of books,” said M. de Bellegarde; “but you must do yourself the justice to remember that your studies were interrupted early.”
“That is very true; on my tenth birthday I stopped going to school. I thought it was a grand way to keep it. But I picked up some information afterwards,” said Newman, reassuringly.
“You have some sisters?” asked old Madame de Bellegarde.
“Yes, two sisters. Splendid women!”
“I hope that for them the hardships of life commenced less early.”
“They married very early, if you call that a hardship, as girls do in our Western country. One of them is married to the owner of the largest india-rubber house in the West.”
“Ah, you make houses also of india-rubber?” inquired the marquise.
“You can stretch them as your family increases,” said young Madame de Bellegarde, who was muffling herself in a long white shawl.
Newman indulged in a burst of hilarity, and explained that the house in which his brother-in-law lived was a large wooden structure, but that he manufactured and sold india-rubber on a colossal scale.
“My children have some little india-rubber shoes which they put on when they go to play in the Tuileries in damp weather,” said the young marquise. “I wonder whether your brother-in-law made them.”
“Very likely,” said Newman; “if he did, you may be very sure they are well made.”
“Well, you must not be discouraged,” said M. de Bellegarde, with vague urbanity.
“Oh, I don’t mean to be. I have a project which gives me plenty to think about, and that is an occupation.” And then Newman was silent a moment, hesitating, yet thinking rapidly; he wished to make his point, and yet to do so forced him to speak out in a way that was disagreeable to him. Nevertheless he continued, addressing himself to old Madame de Bellegarde, “I will tell you my project; perhaps you can help me. I want to take a wife.”
“It is a very good project, but I am no matchmaker,” said the old lady.
Newman looked at her an instant, and then, with perfect sincerity, “I should have thought you were,” he declared.
Madame de Bellegarde appeared to think him too sincere. She murmured something sharply in French, and fixed her eyes on her son. At this moment the door of the room was thrown open, and with a rapid step Valentin reappeared.
“I have a message for you,” he said to his sister-in-law. “Claire bids me to request you not to start for your ball. She will go with you.”
“Claire will go with us!” cried the young marquise. “En voilà, du nouveau!”
“She has changed her mind; she decided half an hour ago, and she is sticking the last diamond into her hair,” said Valentin.
“What has taken possession of my daughter?” demanded Madame de Bellegarde, sternly. “She has not been into the world these three years. Does she take such a step at half an hour’s notice, and without consulting me?”
“She consulted me, dear mother, five minutes since,” said Valentin, “and I told her that such a beautiful woman—she is beautiful, you will see—had no right to bury herself alive.”
“You should have referred Claire to her mother, my brother,” said M. de Bellegarde, in French. “This is very strange.”
“I refer her to the whole company!” said Valentin. “Here she comes!” And he went to the open door, met Madame de Cintré on the threshold, took her by the hand, and led her into the room. She was dressed in white; but a long blue cloak, which hung almost to her feet, was fastened across her shoulders by a silver clasp. She had tossed it back, however, and her long white arms were uncovered. In her dense, fair hair there glittered a dozen diamonds. She looked serious and, Newman thought, rather pale; but she glanced round her, and, when she saw him, smiled and put out her hand. He thought her tremendously handsome. He had a chance to look at her full in the face, for she stood a moment in the centre of the room, hesitating, apparently, what she should do, without meeting his eyes. Then she went up to her mother, who sat in her deep chair by the fire, looking at Madame de Cintré almost fiercely. With her back turned to the others, Madame de Cintré held her cloak apart to show her dress.
“What do you think of me?” she asked.
“I think you are audacious,” said the marquise. “It was but three days ago, when I asked you, as a particular favor to myself, to go to the Duchess de Lusignan’s, that you told me you were going nowhere and that one must be consistent. Is this your consistency? Why should you distinguish Madame Robineau? Who is it you wish to please to-night?”
“I wish to please myself, dear mother,” said Madame de Cintré. And she bent over and kissed the old lady.
“I don’t like surprises, my sister,” said Urbain de Bellegarde; “especially when one is on the point of entering a drawing-room.”
Newman at this juncture felt inspired to speak. “Oh, if you are going into a room with Madame de Cintré, you needn’t be afraid of being noticed yourself!”
M. de Bellegarde turned to his sister with a smile too intense to be easy. “I hope you appreciate a compliment that is paid you at your brother’s expense,” he said. “Come, come, madame.” And offering Madame de Cintré his arm he led her rapidly out of the room. Valentin rendered the same service to young Madame de Bellegarde, who had apparently been reflecting on the fact that the ball-dress of her sister-in-law was much less brilliant than her own, and yet had failed to derive absolute comfort from the reflection. With a farewell smile she sought the complement of her consolation in the eyes of the American visitor, and perceiving in them a certain mysterious brilliancy, it is not improbable that she may have flattered herself she had found it.
Newman, left alone with old Madame de Bellegarde, stood before her a few moments in silence. “Your daughter is very beautiful,” he said at last.
“She is very strange,” said Madame de Bellegarde.
“I am glad to hear it,” Newman rejoined, smiling. “It makes me hope.”
“Hope what?”
“That she will consent, some day, to marry me.”
The old lady slowly rose to her feet. “That really is your project, then?”
“Yes; will you favor it?”
“Favor it?” Madame de Bellegarde looked at him a moment and then shook her head. “No!” she said, softly.
“Will you suffer it, then? Will you let it pass?”
“You don’t know what you ask. I am a very proud and meddlesome old woman.”
“Well, I am very rich,” said Newman.
Madame de Bellegarde fixed her eyes on the floor, and Newman thought it probable she was weighing the reasons in favor of resenting the brutality of this remark. But at last, looking up, she said simply, “How rich?”
Newman expressed his income in a round number which had the magnificent sound that large aggregations of dollars put on when they are translated into francs. He added a few remarks of a financial character, which completed a sufficiently striking presentment of his resources.
Madame de Bellegarde listened in silence. “You are very frank,” she said finally. “I will be the same. I would rather favor you, on the whole, than suffer you. It will be easier.”
“I am thankful for any terms,” said Newman. “But, for the present, you have suffered me long enough. Good night!” And he took his leave.
CHAPTER XI
Newman, on his return to Paris, had not resumed the study of French conversation with M. Nioche; he found that he had too many other uses for his time. M. Nioche, however, came to see him very promptly, having learned his whereabouts by a mysterious process to which his patron never obtained the key. The shrunken little capitalist repeated his visit more than once. He seemed oppressed by a humiliating sense of having been overpaid, and wished apparently to redeem his debt by the offer of grammatical and statistical information in small installments. He wore the same decently melancholy aspect as a few months before; a few months more or less of brushing could make little difference in the antique lustre of his coat and hat. But the poor old man’s spirit was a trifle more threadbare; it seemed to have received some hard rubs during the summer. Newman inquired with interest about Mademoiselle Noémie; and M. Nioche, at first, for answer, simply looked at him in lachrymose silence.
“Don’t ask me, sir,” he said at last. “I sit and watch her, but I can do nothing.”
“Do you mean that she misconducts herself?”
“I don’t know, I am sure. I can’t follow her. I don’t understand her. She has something in her head; I don’t know what she is trying to do. She is too deep for me.”
“Does she continue to go to the Louvre? Has she made any of those copies for me?”
“She goes to the Louvre, but I see nothing of the copies. She has something on her easel; I suppose it is one of the pictures you ordered. Such a magnificent order ought to give her fairy-fingers. But she is not in earnest. I can’t say anything to her; I am afraid of her. One evening, last summer, when I took her to walk in the Champs Élysées, she said some things to me that frightened me.”
“What were they?”
“Excuse an unhappy father from telling you,” said M. Nioche, unfolding his calico pocket-handkerchief.
Newman promised himself to pay Mademoiselle Noémie another visit at the Louvre. He was curious about the progress of his copies, but it must be added that he was still more curious about the progress of the young lady herself. He went one afternoon to the great museum, and wandered through several of the rooms in fruitless quest of her. He was bending his steps to the long hall of the Italian masters, when suddenly he found himself face to face with Valentin de Bellegarde. The young Frenchman greeted him with ardor, and assured him that he was a godsend. He himself was in the worst of humors and he wanted someone to contradict.
“In a bad humor among all these beautiful things?” said Newman. “I thought you were so fond of pictures, especially the old black ones. There are two or three here that ought to keep you in spirits.”
“Oh, to-day,” answered Valentin, “I am not in a mood for pictures, and the more beautiful they are the less I like them. Their great staring eyes and fixed positions irritate me. I feel as if I were at some big, dull party, in a room full of people I shouldn’t wish to speak to. What should I care for their beauty? It’s a bore, and, worse still, it’s a reproach. I have a great many ennuis; I feel vicious.”
“If the Louvre has so little comfort for you, why in the world did you come here?” Newman asked.
“That is one of my ennuis. I came to meet my cousin—a dreadful English cousin, a member of my mother’s family—who is in Paris for a week for her husband, and who wishes me to point out the ‘principal beauties.’ Imagine a woman who wears a green crape bonnet in December and has straps sticking out of the ankles of her interminable boots! My mother begged I would do something to oblige them. I have undertaken to play valet de place this afternoon. They were to have met me here at two o’clock, and I have been waiting for them twenty minutes. Why doesn’t she arrive? She has at least a pair of feet to carry her. I don’t know whether to be furious at their playing me false, or delighted to have escaped them.”
“I think in your place I would be furious,” said Newman, “because they may arrive yet, and then your fury will still be of use to you. Whereas if you were delighted and they were afterwards to turn up, you might not know what to do with your delight.”
“You give me excellent advice, and I already feel better. I will be furious; I will let them go to the deuce and I myself will go with you—unless by chance you too have a rendezvous.”
“It is not exactly a rendezvous,” said Newman. “But I have in fact come to see a person, not a picture.”
“A woman, presumably?”
“A young lady.”
“Well,” said Valentin, “I hope for you with all my heart that she is not clothed in green tulle and that her feet are not too much out of focus.”
“I don’t know much about her feet, but she has very pretty hands.”
Valentin gave a sigh. “And on that assurance I must part with you?”
“I am not certain of finding my young lady,” said Newman, “and I am not quite prepared to lose your company on the chance. It does not strike me as particularly desirable to introduce you to her, and yet I should rather like to have your opinion of her.”
“Is she pretty?”
“I guess you will think so.”
Bellegarde passed his arm into that of his companion. “Conduct me to her on the instant! I should be ashamed to make a pretty woman wait for my verdict.”
Newman suffered himself to be gently propelled in the direction in which he had been walking, but his step was not rapid. He was turning something over in his mind. The two men passed into the long gallery of the Italian masters, and Newman, after having scanned for a moment its brilliant vista, turned aside into the smaller apartment devoted to the same school, on the left. It contained very few persons, but at the farther end of it sat Mademoiselle Nioche, before her easel. She was not at work; her palette and brushes had been laid down beside her, her hands were folded in her lap, and she was leaning back in her chair and looking intently at two ladies on the other side of the hall, who, with their backs turned to her, had stopped before one of the pictures. These ladies were apparently persons of high fashion; they were dressed with great splendor, and their long silken trains and furbelows were spread over the polished floor. It was at their dresses Mademoiselle Noémie was looking, though what she was thinking of I am unable to say. I hazard the supposition that she was saying to herself that to be able to drag such a train over a polished floor was a felicity worth any price. Her reflections, at any rate, were disturbed by the advent of Newman and his companion. She glanced at them quickly, and then, coloring a little, rose and stood before her easel.
“I came here on purpose to see you,” said Newman in his bad French, offering to shake hands. And then, like a good American, he introduced Valentin formally: “Allow me to make you acquainted with the Comte Valentin de Bellegarde.”
Valentin made a bow which must have seemed to Mademoiselle Noémie quite in harmony with the impressiveness of his title, but the graceful brevity of her own response made no concession to underbred surprise. She turned to Newman, putting up her hands to her hair and smoothing its delicately-felt roughness. Then, rapidly, she turned the canvas that was on her easel over upon its face. “You have not forgotten me?” she asked.
“I shall never forget you,” said Newman. “You may be sure of that.”
“Oh,” said the young girl, “there are a great many different ways of remembering a person.” And she looked straight at Valentin de Bellegarde, who was looking at her as a gentleman may when a “verdict” is expected of him.
“Have you painted anything for me?” said Newman. “Have you been industrious?”
“No, I have done nothing.” And taking up her palette, she began to mix her colors at hazard.
“But your father tells me you have come here constantly.”
“I have nowhere else to go! Here, all summer, it was cool, at least.”
“Being here, then,” said Newman, “you might have tried something.”
“I told you before,” she answered, softly, “that I don’t know how to paint.”
“But you have something charming on your easel, now,” said Valentin, “if you would only let me see it.”
She spread out her two hands, with the fingers expanded, over the back of the canvas—those hands which Newman had called pretty, and which, in spite of several paint-stains, Valentin could now admire. “My painting is not charming,” she said.
“It is the only thing about you that is not, then, mademoiselle,” quoth Valentin, gallantly.
She took up her little canvas and silently passed it to him. He looked at it, and in a moment she said, “I am sure you are a judge.”
“Yes,” he answered, “I am.”
“You know, then, that that is very bad.”
“Mon Dieu,” said Valentin, shrugging his shoulders “let us distinguish.”
“You know that I ought not to attempt to paint,” the young girl continued.
“Frankly, then, mademoiselle, I think you ought not.”
She began to look at the dresses of the two splendid ladies again—a point on which, having risked one conjecture, I think I may risk another. While she was looking at the ladies she was seeing Valentin de Bellegarde. He, at all events, was seeing her. He put down the roughly-besmeared canvas and addressed a little click with his tongue, accompanied by an elevation of the eyebrows, to Newman.
“Where have you been all these months?” asked Mademoiselle Noémie of our hero. “You took those great journeys, you amused yourself well?”
“Oh, yes,” said Newman. “I amused myself well enough.”
“I am very glad,” said Mademoiselle Noémie with extreme gentleness, and she began to dabble in her colors again. She was singularly pretty, with the look of serious sympathy that she threw into her face.
Valentin took advantage of her downcast eyes to telegraph again to his companion. He renewed his mysterious physiognomical play, making at the same time a rapid tremulous movement in the air with his fingers. He was evidently finding Mademoiselle Noémie extremely interesting; the blue devils had departed, leaving the field clear.
“Tell me something about your travels,” murmured the young girl.
“Oh, I went to Switzerland,—to Geneva and Zermatt and Zürich and all those places you know; and down to Venice, and all through Germany, and down the Rhine, and into Holland and Belgium—the regular round. How do you say that, in French—the regular round?” Newman asked of Valentin.
Mademoiselle Nioche fixed her eyes an instant on Bellegarde, and then with a little smile, “I don’t understand monsieur,” she said, “when he says so much at once. Would you be so good as to translate?”
“I would rather talk to you out of my own head,” Valentin declared.
“No,” said Newman, gravely, still in his bad French, “you must not talk to Mademoiselle Nioche, because you say discouraging things. You ought to tell her to work, to persevere.”
“And we French, mademoiselle,” said Valentin, “are accused of being false flatterers!”
“I don’t want any flattery, I want only the truth. But I know the truth.”
“All I say is that I suspect there are some things that you can do better than paint,” said Valentin.
“I know the truth—I know the truth,” Mademoiselle Noémie repeated. And, dipping a brush into a clot of red paint, she drew a great horizontal daub across her unfinished picture.
“What is that?” asked Newman.
Without answering, she drew another long crimson daub, in a vertical direction, down the middle of her canvas, and so, in a moment, completed the rough indication of a cross. “It is the sign of the truth,” she said at last.
The two men looked at each other, and Valentin indulged in another flash of physiognomical eloquence. “You have spoiled your picture,” said Newman.
“I know that very well. It was the only thing to do with it. I had sat looking at it all day without touching it. I had begun to hate it. It seemed to me something was going to happen.”
“I like it better that way than as it was before,” said Valentin. “Now it is more interesting. It tells a story. Is it for sale?”
“Everything I have is for sale,” said Mademoiselle Noémie.
“How much is this thing?”
“Ten thousand francs,” said the young girl, without a smile.
“Everything that Mademoiselle Nioche may do at present is mine in advance,” said Newman. “It makes part of an order I gave her some months ago. So you can’t have this.”
“Monsieur will lose nothing by it,” said the young girl, looking at Valentin. And she began to put up her utensils.
“I shall have gained a charming memory,” said Valentin. “You are going away? your day is over?”
