She got the old servant to show Marianne out promptly, as if she felt fearful lest her husband should see the pretty creature. Claire Dujarrier was certainly jealous.
"It is not I that would rob her of her porter!" Marianne thought, as she walked away from Rue La Fontaine.
Evening was now darkening the gray streets. A faint bluish mist was rising over the river and spreading like breath over the quays. Marianne saw Paris in the distance, and her visit seemed like a dream to her; she closed her eyes, and a voice within her whispered confusedly the names of Rosas, Vaudrey, Vanda, Rue Prony; she pictured herself stretched at length on a reclining chair in the luxurious house of a courtesan, and she saw at her feet that man—a minister—who supplicatingly besought her favor, while in the distance a man who resembled Rosas was travelling, moving away, disappearing—
"Nonsense!" the superstitious creature said to herself, "it was one or the other! The duke or the minister! I have not made the choice."
Then looking at the confused image of herself thrown on the window of the cab, she threw a kiss at her own pale reflection, happy with the unbounded joy of a child, and cried aloud while laughing heartily:
"Bonjour, Vanda! I greet you, Mademoiselle Vanda."