Eyes lit from within, large, clear, lustrous, with a meaning in them so profound and serious that it was almost sorrowful,--like the eyes of Giotto's saints and Cimabue's Madonnas.
But I cannot describe her--
"For oh, her looks had something excellent That wants a name!"
I can only look back upon her with "my mind's eye," trying to see her as I saw her then for the first time, and striving to recall my first impressions.
Madame Bouïsse, meanwhile, searched in all the corners of her ample pockets, turned out her table-drawer, dived into the recesses of her husband's empty garments, and peeped into every ornament upon the chimney-piece; but in vain. There was no such thing as a ten-sous piece to be found.
"Pray, M'sieur Basil," said she, "have you one?"
"One what?" I ejaculated, startled out of my reverie.
"Why, a ten-sous piece, to be sure. Don't you see that Mam'selle Hortense is waiting in her wet shoes, and that I have been hunting for the last five minutes, and can't find one anywhere?"
Blushing like a school-boy, and stammering some unintelligible excuse, I pulled out a handful of francs and half-francs, and produced the coin required.
"Dame!" said the concierge. "This comes of using one's eyes too well, my young Monsieur. Hem! I'm not so blind but that I can see as far as my neighbors."