“But I accept nothing,” she said, still laughing. “You pile declaration on declaration and you do not even know me.”
“I don’t know you?”
“You hardly saw me that night—just by the light of a lantern.”
“And didn’t I see you during the day before that night? Didn’t I have time to admire you during that abominable ordeal at La Haie d’Etigues?”
She turned suddenly serious and gazed at him earnestly.
“Oh, you were present, were you?” she said quickly.
“I was there, all right,” he said with triumphant cheerfulness. “I was there; and I know who you are. Daughter of Cagliostro, I know you! You can drop your mask. The first Napoleon played with you.... You betrayed Napoleon III, helped Bismarck, and drove the brave General Boulanger to suicide! You bathe in the fountain of youth. You are a hundred years old—and I love you.”
Her brow was furrowed with a faint frown of troubled doubt.
“Ah, you were there.... I guessed as much.... The brutes! How they did make me suffer!... And you heard their hateful accusations?” she said slowly and thoughtfully.
“I heard a lot of stupid things,” he exclaimed. “And I saw a band of fanatics who hate you as they hate everything that is beautiful. But all that was imbecile and silly. Don’t let’s think any more about it. For my part, I only wish to remember the delightful miracles which spring up before your feet like flowers. I wish to believe in your everlasting youth. I wish to believe that you would not have died if I had not rescued you. I wish to believe that my love is supernatural and that it was by enchantment that you issued just now from the trunk of a yew.”