"Then in Heaven's name, mademoiselle, what are the things you love?"
I asked the question in a playful tone. Mlle. Marguerite turned sharply on me, flashed a haughty look at me, and replied curtly:
"I love my dog. Here, Mervyn!"
She thrust her hand fondly into the Newfoundland's thick coat. Standing on his hind legs, he had already stretched his huge head between my plate and Mlle. Marguerite's.
I began to observe this young lady with more interest, and to search for the outward signs of the unimpressionable soul on which she appeared to pride herself.
I had at first supposed that Mlle. Laroque was very tall, but this impression was due to the noble and harmonious character of her beauty. She is really of medium height. The rounded oval of her face and her haughty and well-poised neck are lightly tinged with sombre gold. Her hair, which lies in strong relief upon her forehead, ripples at every movement of her head with bluish reflections. The fine and delicate nostrils seem to have been copied from the divine model of a Roman Madonna, and cut in living pearl. Under the large, deep, and pensive eyes, the golden sun-burn of the cheeks deepens into an aureole of deeper brown, which looks like the shadow of the eyelashes, or may be a circle seared by the burning glances of her eyes.
It is hard to describe the sovereign sweetness of the smile which animates this lovely face at intervals, and tempers the splendour of the great eyes. Of a surety, the goddess of poetry, of reverie, and of fairy realms might boldly claim the homage of mortals under the form of this child, who loves nothing but her dog. In her rarest creations nature often reserves her most cruel deceptions for us.
After all, it matters little to me. I see plainly that I am to play in the imagination of Mlle. Marguerite a part something like that of a negro, which, as we know, is not an object particularly attractive to Creoles. For my part, I flatter myself that I am quite as proud as Mlle. Marguerite. The most impossible kind of love for me is one which might lay me open to the charge of scheming or self-seeking. But I fancy that I shall not require much moral courage to meet so remote a danger, for Mlle. Marguerite's beauty is of the kind which attracts the contemplation of the artist, rather than any warmer and more human sentiment.
However, at the name of Mervyn, which Mlle. Marguerite had given to her body-guard, Mlle. Hélouin, my left-hand neighbour, plunged boldly into the Arthurian cycle, and was so good as to inform me that Mervyn was the correct name of the celebrated enchanter, whom the vulgar call Merlin. From the Knights of the Round Table she worked back to the days of Cæsar and all the hierarchy of druids, bards, and ovates defiled in tedious procession before me. After them we fell, as a matter of course, from dolmen to menhir and from galgal to cromlech.
While I wandered in Celtic forests with Mlle. Hélouin, who wanted only a little more flesh to make quite a respectable druidess, the widow of the stock-broker made the echoes resound with complaints as ceaseless and monotonous as those of a blind beggar: They had forgotten to give her a foot-warmer! They gave her cold soup! They gave her bones without meat! That was how she was treated! Still, she was used to it. Ah, it is sad to be poor, very sad! She wished she were dead.