The carriage stopped, and the speckless footman, jumping down, inquired: "Monsieur Heine?"
The concierge, knitting beside the porte cochère, looked at him, looked at the glittering victoria he represented, and at the grande dame who sat in it, shielding herself with a parasol from the glory of the Parisian sunlight. Then she shook her head.
"But this is number three, Avenue Matignon?"
"Yes, but Monsieur receives only his old friends. He is dying."
"Madame knows. Take up her name.'"
The concierge glanced at the elegant card. She saw "Lady"—which she imagined meant an English Duchesse—and words scribbled on it in pencil.
"It is au cinquième," she said, with a sigh.
"I will take it up."
Ere he returned, Madame descended and passed from the sparkling sunshine into the gloom of the portico, with a melancholy consciousness of the symbolic. For her spirit, too, had its poetic intuitions and insights, and had been trained by friendship with one of the wittiest and tenderest women of her time to some more than common apprehension of the greater spirit at whose living tomb she was come to worship. Hers was a fine face, wearing the triple aristocracy of beauty, birth, and letters. The complexion was of lustreless ivory, the black hair wound round and round. The stateliness of her figure completed the impression of a Roman matron.
"Monsieur Heine begs that your ladyship will do him the honor of mounting, and will forgive him the five stories for the sake of the view."