“No, you can not conceive it,” said Madame Mollot; “for this knee—”
“Ah! I understand,” cried Olivier Vinet, laughing; “the Unknown was also making his toilet, and you saw his two knees.”
“No, no!” cried Madame Mollot; “you are putting incongruities into my mouth. The stranger was standing up; he held a sponge in his hand above an immense basin, and—none of your jokes, Monsieur Olivier!—it wasn’t his knee, it was his head! He was washing his bald head; he hasn’t a spear of hair upon it.”
“Impudent man!” said Antonin. “He certainly can’t have come with ideas of marriage in that head. Here we must have hair in order to be married. That’s essential.”
“I am therefore right in saying that our Unknown visitor must be fifty years old. Nobody ever takes to a wig before that time of life. After a time, when his toilet was finished, he opened his window and looked out; and then he wore a splendid head of black hair. He turned his eyeglass full on me,—for by that time, I was in my balcony. Therefore, my dear Cecile, you see for yourself that you can’t take that man for the hero of your romance.”
“Why not? Men of fifty are not to be despised, if they are counts,” said Ernestine.
“Heavens! what has age to do with it?” said Mademoiselle Herbelot.
“Provided one gets a husband,” added Vinet, whose cold maliciousness made him feared.
“Yes,” replied the old maid, feeling the cut, “I should prefer a man of fifty, indulgent, kind, and considerate, to a young man without a heart, whose wit would bite every one, even his wife.”
“This is all very well for conversation,” retorted Vinet, “but in order to love the man of fifty and reject the other, it is necessary to have the opportunity to choose.”