“I don’t remember seeing her.”
“Ah! she is a very handsome girl; regular features, aquiline nose—I am very fond of aquiline noses—extraordinary eyes, small waist, beautiful figure,—everything is there!”
“Everything,—you are sure?”
“Bah! you wicked joker! yes, I am sure of it. Anybody can see that at once. I am paying most assiduous court to her, and I have reason to believe that she does not look upon me with indifference. Not long ago, while we were playing games at her mother’s house, she chose me to whisper a secret to; she came to me blushing, and said in my ear: ‘I don’t know what to say to you.’ I was enchanted!”
“I don’t wonder.”
“Yes, for ‘I don’t know what to say to you’ meant: ‘I am afraid of saying too much.’”
“With a well-disposed person it might mean that.”
“Since then I have made no secret of my intentions. Indeed, she is an excellent match; she has a dowry of eighty thousand francs, and brilliant expectations. Her family is noble. And look you, my dear fellow, I confess that, in order to make myself more attractive to the mother, I ventured to put a little de before my name; it was Giraud who advised me to do it. I am now called Ferdinand de Bélan.”
“Oho! so you have ennobled yourself on your own authority?”
“My dear fellow, I believe that I have a right to do it; while searching through my family papers, I discovered that one of my ancestors was an officer of the kitchen to Louis XV, and a man had to be of noble birth to fill that post. It was during the Revolution, no doubt, that my father dropped the de, from fright.”