Like all people with a tinge of southern blood, the Marquise cried out at the slightest increase of temperature. Like all fashionable ladies, she professed to consider those gaieties without which she could not live, duty, but martyrdom.
Mademoiselle, however, loved a ball dearly, and was not ashamed to say so. She entered such gatherings, indeed, with something of the nervousness felt by a recruit in his first engagement. The prospect of triumph was enhanced by the chance of danger; but the sense of personal apprehension forcibly overcome, which is, perhaps, the true definition of courage, added elasticity to her spirits, keenness to her intellect, and even charms to her person. Beauty, moving gracefully amongst admiring glances, under a warm light in a cloud of muslin, carries, perhaps, as high a heart beneath her bodice as beats behind the steel cuirass of Valour, riding his mailed war-horse in triumph through the shock of opposing squadrons.
“And I like going out so much, mamma,” said the girl, sitting on a footstool by her chair, and leaning both elbows on her mother’s lap. “With you I mean; that must, of course, be understood. Alone in a ball-room without the petticoats of Madame la Marquise, behind which to run when the wolf comes, I should be so frightened, I do believe I should begin to cry! Seriously, mamma, I should not like it at all. Tell me, dear mother, how did you manage at first, when you entered a society by yourself?”
“I was never afraid of the wolf,” answered the Marquise, laughing, “and lucky for me I was not, since the late king could not endure shy people, and if you showed the slightest symptoms of awkwardness or want of tact you were simply not asked again. But you are joking, my darling; you who need fear no criticism, with your youth, your freshness, the best dressmaker in Paris, and all that brown hair which Célandine talks of till the tears stand in her eyes.”
“I hate my hair!” interrupted Cerise. “I think it’s hideous! I wish it was black, like yours. A horrid man the other night at ‘Madame’s’ took me for an Englishwoman! He did, mamma! A Prince somebody, all over decorations. I could have run a pin into the wretch with pleasure. One of the things I like going out for is to watch my beautiful mamma, and the way to flatter me is to start back and hold up both hands, exclaiming, ‘Ah! mademoiselle, none but the blind could take you for anything but the daughter of Madame la Marquise!’ The Prince-Marshal does it every time we meet. Dear old man! that is why I am so fond of him.”
The young lady illustrated this frank confession by an absurd little pantomime that mimicked her veteran admirer to the life, causing her mother to laugh heartily.
“I did not know he was such a favourite,” said the Marquise. “You are in luck, my daughter. I expect him to pay us a visit this very evening.”
Cerise made a comical little face of disgust.
“I shall go to bed before he catches me, then,” she answered; “not that he is in the least out of favour; on the contrary, I love him dearly; but when he has been here five minutes I yawn, in ten I shut my eyes, and long before he gets to that bridge which Monsieur de Vendôme ought, or ought not, to have blown up—there—it’s no use! The thing is stronger than I am, and I go fast asleep.”