A faint smile lighted up her wet eyes as she spoke, and she continued in the same strain:
"Only fancy, The Straw Hat—at the Palais Royal. It will be fun, I'm sure; I only like pieces of that kind. As for the others, dramas and sentimental things—well, I think we have enough to stir us up with our own affairs; it isn't worth while going in search of trouble. Then, too, crying with other people; why, it's like weeping into some one else's handkerchief. We are going to take you with us, you know—a regular bachelor's outing it's to be. Papa said we should dine at a restaurant; and I promise you that I'll be as nonsensical, and laugh as I used to when I was a little girl—when I had my English governess—you remember her? She used to wear orange-coloured ribbons, and drink eau de Cologne that she kept in a cupboard until it got in her head. She was a nice old thing."
And as she uttered these words her fingers flew over the keyboard, and she attacked an arrangement with variations of the Carnival of Venice.
"You've been to Venice, haven't you?" she said suddenly, stopping short.
"Yes."
"Isn't it odd that there should be a spot like that on earth, that I don't know and yet that attracts me and makes me dream of it? For some people it's one place, and for others it's another. Now, I've never wanted to see any place except Venice. I'm going to say something silly—Venice seems to me like a city where all the musicians should be buried."
She put her fingers on the notes again, but she only skimmed over them without striking them at all, as if she were just caressing the silence of the piano. Her hands then fell on her knees again, and in a pensive manner, giving way to her thoughts, she half turned her head towards Denoisel.
"You see," she said, "it seems as though there is sadness in the very air. I don't know how it is, but there are days when the sun is shining, when I have nothing the matter with me, no worry and no troubles to face; and yet I positively want to be sad, I try to get the blues, and feel as though I must cry. Many a time I've said I had a headache and gone to bed, just simply for the sake of having a good cry, of burying my face in the pillow; it did me ever so much good. And at such times I haven't the energy to fight against it or to try to overcome it. It's just the same when I am going off in a faint; there's a certain charm in feeling all my courage leaving me——"
"There, there, that's enough, Renée dear! I'll have your horse saddled and we'll go for a ride."
"Ah, that's a good idea! But I warn you I shall go like the wind, to-day."