“‘I sing of times trans-shifting; and I write
How Roses first came red, and Lilies white.’”
François laughed, as he mimicked the accent of his friend the novelist, who since the days of which he talked, had attained an almost European reputation.
“That’s Herrick. You don’t know him? Well, he’s an English seventeenth-century poet, and he wrote on purpose for a woman as simple and natural as Anne Page. She used to read him to us in an old walled garden, where in June that year, the lilies were ‘coming white.’”
“And Dampierre?” asked the Vicomte. “I didn’t know Dampierre in those days, remember. Tell me something about him.”
He spoke as one speaks of a great man who is dead, whose lightest word is of importance to the admirers who survive him.
“René was twenty-seven then,” said François, slowly. “He was a year younger than I. You know how he looked? He was like his mother. Quite magnificent. Oh sometimes absurdly handsome, when the right mood affected his face. He used to dress like an Englishman in those days, in white flannels. When he and Anne walked together they were worth looking at, I can tell you.”
“But she was, what was it? Seven—ten years older?”
“Yes. She remembered that,” returned François.
His companion glanced quickly in his direction. He had never heard the whole story, and his curiosity was roused; but something in his friend’s voice assured him that it would not be gratified.