"Great minds rule the public."
"And yet I fear your courage would ooze away when you came to lay a lance at rest against such a windmill as the common sense of the nineteenth century, whirling its rotary sails under the steady breeze of ridicule. I am a woman, and know a woman's place. I have had dreams in my time,—'dreams like that flower that blooms in a single night, and dies at dawn;' but they are passed. You see, I carry the glare of the foot-lights even here." And a bitter smile curled from her lip.
"Mademoiselle," said Percy, solemnly, "the foot-lights enable you to move man to a hundred passions."
"Yes; it reduces me to the level of a harlequin, to be laughed with, and laughed at. Who are my friends? Are they the idle boys who send me bouquets and never mention my name without looking unutterable things? Have I no tastes, no likings, no feelings, no emotions? In the name of God, was I created only to memorize so many lines of Racine, Corneille, or Voltaire per diem?"
It was a tone of almost ferocity with which she spoke, and the trembling lip, the flashing eye, and the swollen veins on her temple betrayed the self-scorn racking her heart within her.
A bang at the hall-door, and heavy footsteps on the marble pavement, forced her to composure.
"Old-maidish to the last!" (the lady commenced picking the dead leaves off a geranium). "This geranium looks as if you had watched it a year; and this old gray hat, I suppose, you have hung above it for good luck."
"The hat belongs to a friend abroad, and is not to be moved until his safe return; but the geranium was presented not a week ago by my ever-faithful money. You see the magic charm. Here are careful watching, weeks of anxiety, and, no doubt, a modicum of affection (for I have heard people say they loved flowers), bartered away for one milreis."
"Apropos of money,—I thought I was to have a view of the treasures of Aladdin, locked up in the vaults below."
"Of a surety you shall."