Her corsage was ornamented on the left side by an embroidered black butterfly, with outstretched wings of a brownish, brilliant tint, and Vaudrey, with a smile, asked her, without quite understanding what he said, if it were an emblematic crest.
She smiled.
"Precisely," she replied. "What I wear in my corsage I have in my mind. Black butterflies—or blue devils, as you choose."
"You are not exceptional," said Sulpice. "All women are such."
"All women in your opinion then, are a little—what is it called? a little out of the perpendicular—or to speak more to the point, a little queer, Monsieur le Ministre?"
The minister smiled in his turn, and looked at Marianne, whose eyes, seen between the blinking lids, gleamed as the electric eyes of a cat shine between its long lashes.
"No," he said, "no, but I blame them somewhat for loving the blue only in the butterflies of which you speak, the blue devils that penetrate their brain! They are born for blue, however, for that which the provincial poets style 'the azure', and they shun it as if blue were detestable. Blue! Nonsense! Good for men, those simpletons, who in the present age, are the only partisans of blue in passion and in life."
Whether he desired it or not, he had drawn still closer to this creature who studied him like a strategist while he fawned on her with his glances, losing himself in that "blue" of which he spoke with a certain elegance, in which he desired to express mockery, but which was nevertheless sincere. In the same jesting tone, pointing to the light blue of her gown, she said:
"You see, your Excellency, that all women do not dislike blue."
"If it is fashionable, parbleu! And if it becomes their beauty as well as this stuff of yours, they would adore it, most assuredly."