"Are they very much to be pitied?"
Mlle. de Bergerac was silent. "After all," she resumed, "they oughtn't to complain."
"Not when they have a great name and beauty," said Coquelin.
"O heaven!" said the young girl, impatiently, and turned away. Coquelin stood watching her, his brow contracted, his lips parted. Presently, she came back. "Perhaps you think," she said, "that I care for my name,—my great name, as you call it."
"Assuredly, I do."
She stood looking at him, blushing a little and frowning. As he said these words, she gave an impatient toss of the head and turned away again. In her hand she carried an ornamented fan, an antiquated and sadly dilapidated instrument. She suddenly raised it above her head, swung it a moment, and threw it far across the parapet. "There goes the name of Bergerac!" she said; and sweeping round, made the young man a very low courtesy.
There was in the whole action a certain passionate freedom which set poor Coquelin's heart a-throbbing. "To have a good name, mademoiselle," he said, "and to be indifferent to it, is the sign of a noble mind." (In parenthesis, I may say that I think he was quite wrong.)
"It's quite as noble, monsieur," returned my aunt, "to have a small name and not to blush for it."
With these words I fancy they felt as if they had said enough; the conversation was growing rather too pointed.
"I think," said my aunt, "that we had better prepare to go." And she cast a farewell glance at the broad expanse of country which lay stretched out beneath us, striped with the long afternoon shadows.