Palmet looked at him and laughed. “You’re yourself again, are you? Go to Paris in January, and cut out the Frenchmen.”
“Answer me, Palmet: they weren’t in couples?”
“I fancy not. It was luck to meet them, so they couldn’t have been.”
“Did you dance with either of them?”
Unable to state accurately that he had, Palmet cried, “Oh! for dancing, the Frenchwoman beat the Italian.”
“Did you see her often—more than once?”
“My dear fellow, I went everywhere to see her: balls, theatres, promenades, rides, churches.”
“And you say she dressed up to the Italian, to challenge her, rival her?”
“Only one night; simple accident. Everybody noticed it, for they stood for Night and Day,—both hung with gold; the brunette Etruscan, and the blonde Asiatic; and every Frenchman present was epigramizing up and down the rooms like mad.”
“Her husband’s Legitimist; he wouldn’t be at the Tuileries?” Beauchamp spoke half to himself.