“She has none yet, doctor; she waits for a godfather—it is the custom at the Opera. Will you be hers?”
“Very willingly, Mademoiselle.”
“Give her, then, a pretty name—some name of your country.”
“Very well; then I name her ‘Dileri,’ which is a Mogul name.”
“What does it mean?”
“Light of the eyes. Does it please you, Mademoiselle?”
“Dileri is charming! Do the Moguls have such soft names, doctor?—and they are still Moguls. It is wonderful! Mademoiselle Dileri, thank your godfather.”
With that marvellous refinement with which the spirit of the great Fo has imbued his faithful followers, and which renders them superior to all of human kind, I asked Mademoiselle Alexandrine, negligently, “if she had any taste for marriage?”
“Ah!” said she, crossing her beautiful feet upon a footstool of crimson velvet, “it is not marriage that I fear, it is the husband. You do not know French husbands, dear doctor. Such egotists! They marry a pretty woman to have a slave, in spite of the law which forbids trading in human flesh; and when they have her fast enchained, they show her as a curiosity to their friends to excite their envy. Well, since China is now opened, we will go to China to seek husbands. Dear doctor, you will not find in all Paris a husband who would give his wife thirty-three fans without any pretension, as if he merely said, ‘good-day!’ Are the Chinamen good husbands, doctor?”
“Mademoiselle, ’twas a Chinaman who invented the honeymoon!”