Hortense excused herself, a little bit embarrassed; this head-dress from Provence gave so much pleasure to their mother in the sober house.
“Is it not true, mother?” cried she, going from one room into the other. “Besides, that poor girl feels so outlandish in Paris and is so interesting with her blind devotion to the genius of her brother.”
“Oh! Genius, is it?” said the big sister, tossing her head a bit.
“What! You saw it yourself the other night at your house, the effect it produced—everywhere just the same thing!”
And when Rosalie answered that one must estimate at their real value these successes won in the world of society and due to politeness, a caprice of an evening, the last fad:
“Well, I don’t care, he is in the opera!”
The velvet band on the little head-dress bristled up in sign of revolt, as if it were really covering one of those enthusiastic heads above whose profile it floats, down there in Provence. Besides, the Valmajours were not peasants like others, but the last remnants of a reduced family of nobles.
Rosalie, standing in front of the tall mirror, turned about laughing:
“What! You believe in that legend?”
“Why, of course I do. They descend in direct line from the Princes des Baux. There are the parchments and there are the coats of arms at their rustic doorway. Any day that they should wish—”