"You surprise me greatly," said Monsieur de Boisguilbault in exactly the same tone in which he had said, a few moments earlier: I am entirely of your opinion. And he added: "Won't you put some sugar in your coffee?"
"I am more surprised," said Emile, mechanically helping himself to sugar, "that you do not realize how solemn and impressive your solitude, your gravity, and I will venture to add, your melancholy, must be to a child like myself."
"Do I frighten you?" said Monsieur de Boisguilbault with a deep sigh.
"You frighten me terribly, monsieur le marquis, I frankly admit; but do not take my ingenuousness in bad part, for it is no less certain that I am impelled by an entirely contrary sentiment of irresistible attraction, to overcome that sentiment of fear."
"That is strange," said the marquis, "very strange: pray explain it to me."
"It is very simple. As a young man of my age goes about seeking the solution of his own future in the present or in the past of men of maturer years, it terrifies him to see an invincible sadness and a dumb but profound distaste for life, written upon austere brows."
"Yes, that is why my external appearance repels you. Do not be afraid to say it. You are not the first and I expected it."
"Repel is not the word, since, notwithstanding the sort of magnetic stupor into which you cast me, I am drawn toward you by a peculiar attraction."
"Peculiar!—aye, very peculiar, and you are the more eccentric of us two. I was struck, the first moment I saw you, by the manifest dissimilarity of your character to that of the men whom I knew in my younger days."
"And was that impression unfavorable to me, monsieur le marquis?"