But the young girl, in whom the instinct of rivalry suddenly awoke, ventured to say: “I do not find her beautiful at all.”
“What! You do not think her beautiful?” said the painter.
“No; she looks as if she had been dipped in ink.”
The Duchess, delighted, burst into laughter.
“Bravo, little one!” she cried. “For the last six years half the men in Paris have been swooning at the feet of that negress! I believe that they sneer at us. Look at the Comtesse de Lochrist instead.”
Alone, in a landau with a white poodle, the Countess, delicate as a miniature, a blond with brown eyes, whose grace and beauty had served for five or six years as the theme for the admiration of her partisans, bowed to the ladies, with a fixed smile on her lips.
But Nanette exhibited no greater enthusiasm than before.
“Oh,” she said, “she is no longer young!”
Bertin, who usually did not at all agree with the Countess in the daily discussions of these two rivals, felt a sudden irritation at the stupid intolerance of this little simpleton.
“Nonsense!” he said. “Whether one likes her or not, she is charming; and I only hope that you may become as pretty as she.”