This time it was not a flower. The object, whatever it was—for at first he could not be certain of it—was enveloped in paper, and tied carefully with a purple silk thread several times round the paper.
"Oh, oh!" thought the painter, picking up the little roll of paper, and rapidly hiding it in the pocket of the waistcoat which he wore under his poncho; "This complicates the matter. Are we already to write to one another? The devil! This is making rapid progress, indeed!"
He began to walk rapidly to reach his lodgings; but soon reflecting that this unaccustomed proceeding would astonish people who were in the habit of seeing him, lounging and looking about him, he checked himself, and resumed his ordinary pace.
But his hand was incessantly going to his pocket, to feel the object which he had so carefully deposited there.
"God pardon me," said he, after a time! "I believe it is a ring. Oh, oh! That would be charming! Upon, my word, I return to my first idea—I will buy a guitar, and a mantle the colour of the wall, and in making love to my beautiful unknown—for she is beautiful, I doubt not—I will forget the torments of exile. But," said he, suddenly stopping right in the middle of the square, and throwing up his arms with a desperate air, "if she is ugly! Ugly women have often extraordinary ideas which seize them, they know not why. Ah! That would be frightful! Come! What am I talking about? The devil take me, if I am not becoming stupid! She cannot be ugly, for the very simple, reason that all the Spaniards are pretty."
And reassured by this reasoning, the deduction from which was so pleasant, the young man pursued his journey.
As the reader has been in a position to perceive, Emile Gagnepain loved talking to himself—sometimes even he went to extravagant lengths—but the fault was not his. Thrown by chance in a foreign land, only speaking with difficulty the language of the people among whom he found himself, and not having near him any friend to whom he could confide his joys and his troubles, he was to some extent obliged to make a confidant of himself; so true is it that man is an eminently social animal, and that life in common is indispensable to him, through the incessant want which he experiences in each circumstance of his life, of unburdening his heart, and of sharing with some one of his own species the sweet or painful sentiments which it feels.
While he was still reflecting, the young man arrived at the house which, he occupied in common with M. Dubois.
An attendant seemed to be waiting for his arrival. As soon as he perceived the painter, he quickly approached him, and after having respectfully saluted him—
"I beg your pardon, your lordship," said he to him, "my lord duke has several times asked for you today. He has left orders that as soon as you arrive we should ask you to go to his apartment."