The Lady Baussiere rode on.
A decayed kinsman bowed himself to the ground.
——The Lady Baussiere rode on.
He ran begging bare-headed on one side of her palfrey, conjuring her by the former bonds of friendship, alliance, consanguinity, etc.——Cousin, aunt, sister, mother,——for virtue’s sake, for your own, for mine, for Christ’s sake, remember me——pity me.
——The Lady Baussiere rode on.
Take hold of my whiskers, said the Lady Baussiere——The page took hold of her palfrey. She dismounted at the end of the terrace.
There are some trains of certain ideas which leave prints of themselves about our eyes and eye-brows; and there is a consciousness of it, somewhere about the heart, which serves but to make these etchings the stronger—we see, spell, and put them together without a dictionary.
Ha, ha! he, hee! cried La Guyol and La Sabatiere, looking close at each other’s prints——Ho, ho! cried La Battarelle and Maronette, doing the same:—Whist! cried one—st, st,—said a second—hush, quoth a third—poo, poo, replied a fourth—gramercy! cried the Lady Carnavallette;——’twas she who bewhisker’d St. Bridget.
La Fosseuse drew her bodkin from the knot of her hair, and having traced the outline of a small whisker, with the blunt end of it, upon one side of her upper lip, put it into La Rebours’ hand—La Rebours shook her head.
The Lady Baussiere coughed thrice into the inside of her muff—La Guyol smiled—Fy, said the Lady Baussiere. The queen of Navarre touched her eye with the tip of her fore-finger—as much as to say, I understand you all.