“She puts on big airs,” said Le Duc, “but that does not impose on me. Don’t you think she is very pretty?”
“I think you are very impudent. You ape your betters, and I don’t approve of it. Get up. You must wait on me at table, and afterwards you will eat your dinner by yourself, and try to get yourself respected as an honest man always is, whatever his condition, so long as he does not forget himself. You must not stay any longer in this room, the doorkeeper will give you another.”
I went out, and on meeting the fair cousin I told her that I was jealous of the honour which she had done my man, and that I begged her to wait on him no longer.
“Oh, I am very glad!”
The door-keeper came up, and I gave him my orders, and went back to my room to write.
Before dinner the baron came and told me that he had just come from the lady to whom he had introduced me. She was the wife of a barrister named Morin, and aunt to the young lady who had so interested me.
“I have been talking of you,” said the baron, “and of the impression her niece made on you. She promised to send for her, and to keep her at the house all day.”
After a dinner as good as the supper of the night before, though different from it in its details, and appetising enough to awaken the dead, we went to see Madame Morin, who received us with the easy grace of a Parisian lady. She introduced me to seven children, of whom she was the mother. Her eldest daughter, an ordinary-looking girl, was twelve years old, but I should have taken her to be fourteen, and said so. To convince me of her age the mother brought a book in which the year, the month, the day, the hour, and even the minute of her birth were entered. I was astonished at such minute accuracy, and asked if she had had a horoscope drawn.
“No,” said she, “I have never found anybody to do it.”
“It is never too late,” I replied, “and without doubt God has willed that this pleasure should be reserved for me.”