I was as much delighted as a rustic at a menagerie, and Dalrymple, seeing this, continued to point out one celebrity after another till I began no longer to remember which was which. Thus Lamartine, Horace Vernet, Scribe, Baron Humboldt, Miss Bremer, Arago, Auber, and Sir Edwin Landseer, were successively indicated, and I thought myself one of the most fortunate fellows in Paris, only to be allowed to look upon them.
"I suppose the spirit of lion-hunting is an original instinct," I said, presently. "Call it vulgar excitement, if you will; but I must confess that to see these people, and to be able to write about them to my father, is just the most delightful thing that has happened to me since I left home."
"Call things by their right names, Damon," said Dalrymple, good-naturedly. "If you were a parvenu giving a party, and wanted all these fine folks to be seen at your house, that would be lion-hunting; but being whom and what you are, it is hero-worship--a disease peculiar to the young; wholesome and inevitable, like the measles."
"What have I done," said a charming voice close by, "that Captain Dalrymple will not even deign to look upon me?"
The charming voice proceeded from the still more charming lips of an exceedingly pretty brunette in a dress of light green silk, fastened here and there with bouquets of rosebuds. Plump, rosy, black-haired, bright-eyed, bewilderingly coquettish, this lady might have been about thirty years of age, and seemed by no means unconscious of her powers of fascination.
"I implore a thousand pardons, Madame...." began my friend.
"Comment! A thousand pardons for a single offence!" exclaimed the lady. "What an unreasonable culprit!"
To which she added, quite audibly, though behind the temporary shelter of her fan:--
"Who is this beau garçon whom you seem to have brought with you?"
I turned aside, affecting not to hear the question; but could not help listening, nevertheless. Of Dalrymple's reply, however, I caught but my own name.