“Ought I to make a scene and leave Coralie?” he pondered. “Is it worth while to make a fuss about a trifle? There is a pair of boots wherever you go. These would be more in place in a shop window or taking a walk on the boulevard on somebody’s feet; here, however, without a pair of feet in them, they tell a pretty plain tale. I am fifty years old, and that is the truth; I ought to be as blind as Cupid himself.”
There was no excuse for this mean-spirited monologue. The boots were not the high-lows at present in vogue, which an unobservant man may be allowed to disregard up to a certain point. They were the unmistakable, uncompromising hessians then prescribed by fashion, a pair of extremely elegant betasseled boots, which shone in glistening contrast against tight-fitting trousers invariably of some light color, and reflected their surroundings like a mirror. The boots stared the honest silk-mercer out of countenance, and, it must be added, they pained his heart.
“What is it?” asked Coralie.
“Nothing.”
“Ring the bell,” said Coralie, smiling to herself at Camusot’s want of spirit.—“Bérénice,” she said, when the Norman handmaid appeared, “just bring me a button-hook, for I must put on these confounded boots again. Don’t forget to bring them to my dressing-room to-night.”
“What?... your boots?”... faltered out Camusot, breathing more freely.
“And whose should they be?” she demanded haughtily. “Were you beginning to believe?—great stupid! Oh! and he would believe it too,” she went on, addressing Bérénice.—“I have a man’s part in What’s-his-name’s piece, and I have never worn a man’s clothes in my life before. The bootmaker for the theatre brought me these things to try if I could walk in them, until a pair can be made to measure. He put them on, but they hurt me so much that I have taken them off, and after all I must wear them.”
“Don’t put them on again if they are uncomfortable,” said Camusot. (The boots had made him feel so very uncomfortable himself.)
“Mademoiselle would do better to have a pair made of very thin morocco, sir, instead of torturing herself as she did just now; but the management is so stingy. She was crying, sir; if I was a man and loved a woman, I wouldn’t let her shed a tear, I know. You ought to order a pair for her——”
“Yes, yes,” said Camusot. “Are you just getting up, Coralie?”