“And why do you detest me, miss?” said Adrienne mildly, when Rose-Pompon had finished her speech.
“Oh! bless me, madame!” replied the latter, forgetting altogether her assumption of triumph, and yielding to the natural sincerity of her character; “pretend that you don’t know why I detest you!—Oh, yes! people go and pick bouquets from the jaws of a panther for people that they care nothing about, don’t they? And if it was only that!” added Rose-Pompon, who was gradually getting animated, and whose pretty face, at first contracted into a sullen pout, now assumed an expression of real and yet half-comic sorrow.
“And if it was only the nosegay!” resumed she. “Though it gave me a dreadful turn to see Prince Charming leap like a kid upon the stage, I might have said to myself: ‘Pooh! these Indians have their own way of showing politeness. Here, a lady drops her nosegay, and a gentleman picks it up and gives it to her; but in India it is quite another thing; the man picks up the nosegay, and does not return it to the woman—he only kills a panther before her eyes.’ Those are good manners in that country, I suppose; but what cannot be good manners anywhere is to treat a woman as I have been treated. And all thanks to you, madame!”
These complaints of Rose-Pompon, at once bitter and laughable, did not at all agree with what she had previously stated as to Djalma’s passionate love for her; but Adrienne took care not to point out this contradiction, and said to her, mildly: “You must be mistaken, miss, when you suppose that I had anything to do with your troubles. But, in any case, I regret sincerely that you should have been ill-treated by any one.”
“If you think I have been beaten, you are quite wrong,” exclaimed Rose Pompon. “Ah! well, I am sure! No, it is not that. But I am certain that, had it not been for you, Prince Charming would have got to love me a little. I am worthy of the trouble, after all—and then there are different sorts of love—I am not so very particular—not even so much as that,” added Rose-Pompon, snapping her fingers.
“Ah!” she continued, “when Ninny Moulin came to fetch me, and brought me jewels and laces to persuade me to go with him, he was quite right in saying there was no harm in his offers.”
“Ninny Moulin?” asked Mdlle. de Cardoville, becoming more and more interested; “who is this Ninny Moulin, miss?”
[Original]
“A religious writer,” answered Rose-Pompon, pouting; “the right-hand man of a lot of old sacristans, whose money he takes on pretense of writing about morality and religion. A fine morality it is!”