At last, breaking the silence, she said, sadly,
“The method seems to me an excellent one, but I do not think I ought to make use of it.”
Then she asked me if the aroph took much time to make.
“Two hours at most,” I answered, “if I succeed in procuring English saffron, which Paracelsus prefers to the Oriental saffron.”
At that moment her mother and the Chevalier Farsetti came in, and after some talk of no consequence she asked me to stay to dinner. I was going to decline, when Mdlle. X. C. V. said she would sit at table, on which I accepted; and we all left the room to give her time to dress. She was not long in dressing, and when she appeared her figure seemed to me quite nymph-like. I was astonished, and could scarcely believe my eyes, and I was on the point of thinking that I had been imposed on, for I could not imagine how she could manage to conceal the fulness I had felt with my own hands.
M. Farsetti sat by her, and I by the mother. Mdlle. X. C. V., whose head was full of the aroph, asked her neighbour, who gave himself out for a great chemist, if he knew it.
“I fancy I know it better than anyone,” answered Farsetti, in a self-satisfied manner.
“What is it good for?”
“That is too vague a question.”
“What does the word mean?”