“Louise, Louise, your blue eyes are as deep as the sea I saw at Boulogne last year! No, no, I mistake—the sea is perfidious: your eyes are as deep as the azure yonder—look!—over our heads!”
“Well, since you can read so well in my eyes, tell me what I am thinking about, Montalais.”
“In the first place, you don’t think Monsieur Raoul; you think My dear Raoul.”
“Oh!——”
“Never blush for such a trifle as that! ‘My dear Raoul,’ we will say—‘You implore me to write to you at Paris, where you are detained by your attendance on M. le Prince. As you must be very dull there, to seek for amusement in the remembrance of a provinciale——’”
Louise rose up suddenly. “No, Montalais,” said she, with a smile; “I don’t think a word of that. Look, this is what I think;” and she seized the pen boldly and traced, with a firm hand, the following words:—
“I should have been very unhappy if your entreaties to obtain a remembrance of me had been less warm. Everything here reminds me of our early days, which so quickly passed away, which so delightfully flew by, that no others will ever replace the charm of them in my heart.”
Montalais, who watched the flying pen, and read, the wrong way upwards, as fast as her friend wrote, here interrupted by clapping her hands. “Capital!” cried she; “there is frankness—there is heart—there is style! Show these Parisians, my dear, that Blois is the city for fine language!”
“He knows very well that Blois was a Paradise to me,” replied the girl.
“That is exactly what you mean to say; and you speak like an angel.”