She was puzzled, and looked it:
"Monseigneur will pardon me, but the name of M. de Straz is that of a stranger.... Yet he has received from Monseigneur a message for me?..."
Louis Napoleon explained. She listened with a gravity that chilled his amusement over the message he had sent to the supposedly elderly sender of the violets.
She said, looking at him steadily with her sincere eyes:
"I sent Monseigneur no violets, with messages written or otherwise. To have done so would have been presumptuous, and lacking in delicacy.... If this M. de Straz were but here.... If Monseigneur could but describe him!..."
Monseigneur caught up the unfinished caricature:
"Look, Mademoiselle! This is he!"
It was he.... The Assyrian head, great torso, and short legs had been grotesquely exaggerated. But the ferocity, sentimentality, and sensuality mingling in the exotic temperament of the Roumanian, had been conveyed with a mastery of technique and a grasp of character astonishing, considering the artist's youth. And seeing, Juliette recognized the man they had encountered in the vestibule. Just as he had passed them, Adelaide had cried out, and sunk down helplessly in a genuine swoon.
"Ah, yes, Monseigneur, I have seen this gentleman, but a few moments ago. We encountered him at the instant of entering the house. But I do not know him—I have never before met him! Why, then, should M. de Straz speak familiarly of me?"
The boy said, with a tactfulness that was ingratiating: