With precautions, which a custodian of the Dresden Grune Gewolbe might have admired, he took out an infinitesimal key and opened a square cedar-wood box. The Englishwoman was much impressed with its shape and plainness. From that box, lined with black satin, he drew a shawl worth about fifteen hundred francs, a black pattern on a golden-yellow ground, of which the startling color was only surpassed by the surprising efforts of the Indian imagination.
"Splendid," said the lady, in a mixture of French and English, "it is really handsome. Just my ideal" (ideol) "of a shawl; it is very magnificent." The rest was lost in a madonna's pose assumed for the purpose of displaying a pair of frigid eyes which she believed to be very fine.
"It was a great favorite with the Emperor Napoleon; he took——"
"A great favorite," repeated she with her English accent. Then she arranged the shawl about her shoulders and looked at herself in the glass. The proprietor took it to the light, gathered it up in his hands, smoothed it out, showed the gloss on it, played on it as Liszt plays on the pianoforte keys.
"It is very fine; beautiful, sweet!" said the lady, as composedly as possible.
Duronceret, Bixiou, and the shopmen exchanged amused glances. "The shawl is sold," they thought.
"Well, madame?" inquired the proprietor, as the Englishwoman appeared to be absorbed in meditations infinitely prolonged.
"Decidedly," said she; "I would rather have a carriage" (une voteure).
All the assistants, listening with silent rapt attention, started as one man, as if an electric shock had gone through them.
"I have a very handsome one, madame," said the proprietor with unshaken composure; "it belonged to a Russian princess, the Princess Narzicof; she left it with me in payment for goods received. If madame would like to see it, she would be astonished. It is new; it has not been in use altogether for ten days; there is not its like in Paris."