Then, resuming her old sprightly tone:
"I believe I called you 'thou' just now, ami. You mustn't mind that. I mix all my dialects occasionally, and in my country we use 'thou' to practically every one, from our cattle up to the Czar himself."
A long silence followed, broken only at rhythmic intervals by the weird strains Melusine drew from her guzla.
Incense was burning in a bowl.
I began to turn over, without reading, the pages of a book which lay open on a small table beside me.
"Do you like that?" Aurora asked.
"That" was the Reisebilder.
I told her I was a great lover of Heine.
"Now what I value most in a poet," she said, "is a certain quality of soul. That is why I love Shelley and Lamartine, and dislike this Heine. Oh, I know what you'll say, the Nordsee and the rest. No one knows my debt to him better than I; but he's like Deutz, who sold your Duchesse de Berry, and I always feel I want to offer him the tribute of my admiration with a pair of tongs."
She took the book from me and looked through it.