I lifted the parasol toward that glove as I would have moved to set a candle on an altar. Then, at a thought, I placed it not in the glove, but in the thin hand of the gentleman. At the same time the voice of the lady spoke to me—I was to have the joy of remembering that this voice had spoken four words to me.
“Je vous remercie, monsieur,” it said.
“Pas de quoi!” I murmured.
The American trousers in a loud tone made reference in the idiom to my miserable head: “Did you ever see anything to beat it?”
The beautiful voice answered, and by the gentleness of her sorrow for me I knew she had no thought that I might understand. “Come away. It is too pitiful!”
Then the grey skirt and the little round-toed shoes beneath it passed from my sight, quickly hidden from me by the increasing crowd; yet I heard the voice a moment more, but fragmentarily: “Don’t you see how ashamed he is, how he must have been starving before he did that, or that someone dependent on him needed—”
I caught no more, but the sweetness that this beautiful lady understood and felt for the poor absurd wretch was so great that I could have wept. I had not seen her face; I had not looked up—even when she went.
“Who is she?” cried a scoundrel voyous, just as she turned. “Madame of the parasol? A friend of monsieur of the ornamented head?”
“No. It is the first lady in waiting to his wife, Madame la Duchesse,” answered a second. “She has been sent with an equerry to demand of monseigneur if he does not wish a little sculpture upon his dome as well as the colour decorations!”
“‘Tis true, my ancient?” another asked of me.