“Fourteen and a half,” replied Madame Guérard.
“No,” I exclaimed, “I am nearly fifteen.”
The kind old man smiled.
“In twenty years from now,” he said, “you will insist less upon the exact figures,” and, evidently thinking the visit had lasted long enough, he rose.
“It appears,” he said to Madame Guérard, “that this little girl’s mother is very beautiful?”
“Oh, very beautiful,” she replied.
“You will please express my regret to her that I have not seen her, and my thanks for her having been so charmingly replaced.” He thereupon kissed Madame Guérard’s hand, and she coloured slightly. This conversation remained engraved on my mind. I remember every word of it, every movement and every gesture of M. Auber’s, for this little man, so charming and so gentle, held my future in his transparent-looking hand. He opened the door for us and, touching me on my shoulder, said: “Come, courage, little girl. Believe me, you will thank your mother some day for driving you to it. Don’t look so sad. Life is well worth beginning seriously, but gaily.”
I stammered out a few words of thanks, and just as I was making my exit a fine-looking woman knocked against me. She was heavy and extremely bustling, though, and M. Auber bent his head towards me and said quietly:
“Above all things, don’t let yourself get stout like this singer. Stoutness is the enemy of a woman and of an artist.”
The man-servant was now holding the door open for us, and as M. Auber returned to his visitor I heard him say: