“But, monsieur,” I answered, delighted to have to do with a gentleman once more, “I have no idea what all this means. For the last quarter of an hour this reporter and that extraordinary man have been talking about a whale. They declare, authoritatively, that I must go and pay it a visit and I know absolutely nothing about it at all. These two gentlemen took my carriage by storm, installed themselves in it without my permission and, as you see, are giving invitations in my name to people I do not know, asking them to go with me to a place about which I know nothing, for the purpose of paying a visit to a whale which is to be introduced to me and which is waiting impatiently to die in peace.”

The kindly disposed gentleman signed to his daughter to come with us and, accompanied by them, and by Jarrett, and Mme. Guérard, I went up in an elevator to the door of my suite of rooms. I found my apartments hung with valuable pictures and full of magnificent statues. I felt rather disturbed in my mind, for among these objects of art were two or three very rare and beautiful things which I knew must have cost an exorbitant price. I was afraid lest any of them should be stolen and I spoke of my fear to the proprietor of the hotel.

“Mr. X——, to whom the knickknacks belong,” he answered, “wishes you to have them to look at as long as you are here, mademoiselle, and when I expressed my anxiety about them to him just as you have done to me, he merely remarked that ‘it was all the same to him.’ As to the pictures, they belong to two wealthy Bostonians.” There was among them a superb Millet which I should have liked very much to own. After expressing my gratitude, and admiring these treasures, I asked for an explanation of the story of the whale, and Mr. Max Gordon, the father of the little girl, translated for me what the little man in the fur cap had said. It appeared that he owned several fishing boats which he sent out for codfishing for his own benefit. One of these boats had captured an enormous whale, which still had the two harpoons in it. The poor creature, thoroughly exhausted with its struggles, was several miles farther along the coast, but it had been easy to capture it and bring it in triumph to Henry Smith, the owner of the boats. It was difficult to say by what freak of fancy and by what turn of the imagination this man had arrived at associating in his mind the idea of the whale and my name as a source of wealth. I could not understand it, but the fact remained that he insisted in such a droll way and so authoritatively and energetically that the following morning at seven o’clock, fifty persons assembled, in spite of the icy cold rain, to visit the basin of the quay. Mr. Gordon had given orders that his mail coach with four beautiful horses should be in readiness. He drove himself, and his daughter, Jarrett, my sister, Mme. Guérard, and another elderly lady, whose name I have forgotten, were with us. Seven other carriages followed. It was all very amusing indeed. On our arrival at the quay, we were received by this comic Henry, shaggy looking this time from head to foot, and his hands encased in fingerless woolen gloves. Only his eyes and his huge diamond shone out from his furs. I walked along the quay, very much amused and interested. There were a few idlers looking on also and alas! three times over alas!—there were reporters. Henry’s shaggy paw then seized my hand and he drew me along with him quickly to the staircase. I barely escaped breaking my neck at least a dozen times. He pushed me along, made me stumble down the ten steps of the basin and I next found myself on the back of the whale. They assured me that it still breathed; I should not like to affirm that it really did, but the splashing of the water breaking its eddy against the poor creature caused it to oscillate slightly. Then, too, it was covered with glazed frost, and twice I fell down full length on its spine. I laugh about it now, but I was furious then. Everyone around me insisted, however, on my pulling a piece of the shattered whalebone from the mouth of the poor wounded creature, a sliver of that bone from which those little ribs are made which are used for women’s corsets. I did not like to do this, as I feared to cause it suffering and I was sorry for the poor thing, as three of us, Henry, the little Gordon girl, and I, had been skating about on its back for the last ten minutes. Finally, I decided to do it. I pulled out the little piece of whalebone and went up the steps again, holding my poor trophy in my hand. I felt nervous and flustered, and everyone surrounded me. I was annoyed with this man. I did not want to return to the coach, as I thought I could hide my bad temper better in one of the huge, gloomy-looking landaus which followed, but the charming Miss Gordon asked me so sweetly why I would not drive with them, that I felt my anger melt away before the child’s smiling face.

“Would you like to drive?” her father asked me, and I accepted with pleasure.

Jarrett immediately proceeded to get down from the coach as quickly as his age and corpulence would allow him.

“If you are going to drive I prefer getting down,” he said, and he took his place in another carriage. I changed seats boldly with Mr. Gordon in order to drive, and we had not gone a hundred yards before I had let the horses make for a chemist’s shop along the quay and got the coach itself up on to the footpath, so that if it had not been for the quickness and energy of Mr. Gordon we should all have been killed. On arriving at the hotel, I went to bed and stayed there until it was time for the theater in the evening.

CHAPTER XXVII
I VISIT MONTREAL

We played “Hernani” that night to a full house. The seats had been sold to the highest bidders, and considerable prices were obtained for them. We gave fifteen performances at Boston at an average of 19,000 francs for each performance. I was sorry to leave that city, as I had spent two charming weeks there, my mind all the time on the alert when holding conversations with the Boston women. They are Puritans from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, but they are indulgent and there is no bitterness about their puritanism. What struck me most about the women of Boston was the harmony and softness of their gestures. Brought up among the severest and harshest of traditions, the Bostonian race seems to me to be the most refined and the most mysterious of all the American races. As the women are in the majority in Boston, many of the young girls will remain unmarried. All their vital forces which they cannot expend in love and in maternity they employ in fortifying and making supple the beauty of their body, by means of exercise and sports, without losing any of their grace. All the reserves of heart are expended in intellectuality. They adore music, the theater, literature, painting, and poetry. They know everything and understand everything, are chaste and reserved, and neither laugh nor talk very loudly.

They are as far removed from the Latin race as the North Pole is from the South Pole, but they are interesting, delightful, and captivating.