Her sightless but still wonderfully expressive eyes looked up into his face.
"With you to tempt me, Alphonse, how could I resist? Alas, human nature is weak where the heart is concerned."
"Have you any children?" we asked.
"We have four, señor," replied the old lady. "And grand-children also. Our children are all out in the world, and not one of them lives in Lerida. As far as I was able I brought them up well, and tried to give them a little bearing and refinement. But we have always been poor, and poverty means limitation. They are all prospering, but in fairly humble life. At rare intervals one or other pays us a visit; but time flies quickly and they are soon gone again."
Then we talked about France and the French. We happened to know many places in common, and describing what they are to-day, enabled her to realise the vast changes seventy years had worked. The old lady gave many a sigh.
"Alphonse, it is all a new world," she said over and over again. "If we went back to it we should be lost and strange. It is time we passed out of life. But, señor, your visit has brought back a breath of that old life to me. Those who come to us now are humble, and know nothing of our past world. You almost make me feel young again; bring back lost realities, when I was a lady, and had not thrown up all for love, and dreamed not of a humble life of poverty. But, oh, I would renounce it all again a second time for my husband's sake."
Who would have supposed such an idyll in the quiet town of Lerida? When our Boot-cleaner in Ordinary had come to us that morning and received his humble dole for the work done, who could have imagined that such a romance, a poem in real life, was concealed in his history?
When we went back into the quiet streets the gloom had deepened; twilight reigned; a soft glow was in the evening sky; one or two stars were faintly shining. We could not lose the impression of the visit we had just paid; the wonderful little fairy-queen in the arm-chair, who was still ladylike and beautiful and refined in spite of a hard and humble life, and the fine and venerable old man, who for seventy years had remained true and faithful to his first love. No Knight of the Round Table could ever have proved more noble and devoted; worthier King Arthur's friendship. The very streets of the town seemed to have gained a charm as we passed through them on our way to the fonda.
H. C. was singularly quiet and grave. "Of what are you thinking?" we asked.