Madame de Choisy instantly began some compliments, but finding she only disconcerted me, she soon said she must not keep me back, and curtsied me on to another room, into which she shut me.
A MISAPPREHENSION.
I here imagined I was to find M. de Montmorency, but I saw only a lady, who stood at the upper end of the apartment, and slightly curtsied, but without moving or speaking. Concluding this to be another dame de la cour, from my internal persuasion that ultimately I was to be presented by M. de Montmorency, I approached her composedly, with a mere common inclination of the head, and looked wistfully forward to the further door. She inquired politely after my Page 296
health, expressing good-natured concern to hear it had been deranged, and adding that she was bien aise de me voir.](250) I thanked her, with some expression of obligation to her civility, but almost without looking at her, from perturbation lest some mistake had intervened to prevent my introduction, as I still saw nothing of M. de Montmorency.
She then asked me if I would not sit down, taking a seat at the same time herself. I readily complied; but was too much occupied with the ceremony I was awaiting to discourse, though she immediately began what was meant for a conversation. I hardly heard, or answered, so exclusively was my attention engaged in watching the door through which I was expecting a summons; till, at length, the following words rather surprised me (I must write them in English, for my greater ease, though they were spoken in French)—"I am quite sorry to have read your last charming work in French."
My eyes now changed their direction from the door to her face, to which I hastily turned my head, as she added,—"Puis-je le garder le livre que vous m'avez envoy?"(251)
A DISCOVERY AND A RECTIFICATION.
Startled, as if awakened from a dream, I fixed her and perceived the same figure that I had seen at the salon. I now felt sure I was already in the royal presence of the Duchesse d'Angoulme, with whom I had seated myself almost cheek by jowl, without the smallest suspicion of my situation.
I really seemed thunderstruck. I had approached her with so little formality, I had received all her graciousness with so little apparent sense of her condescension, I had taken my seat, nearly unasked, so completely at my ease, and I had pronounced so unceremoniously the plain "vous," without softening it off with one single "altesse royale," that I had given her reason to think me either the most forward person in my nature, or the worst bred ]In my education, existing.
I was in a consternation and a confusion that robbed me of breath; and my first impulse was to abruptly arise, confess my error, and offer every respectful apology I could devise; but as my silence and strangeness produced silence, a pause ensued that gave me a moment for reflection, which represented Page 297