Could I abase my dignity as representative of the Celestial Empire by causing search to be made for a danseuse? What would the grand secretary for foreign affairs have said of me! I could only suffer in silence. So I did suffer—and hold my tongue.
Forty days after that fatal Sunday I was walking along a great street, whose name I forget, and having a habit of reading signs as I pass along, what was my astonishment to read the following:
“CITY OF PEKIN!”
Chinese Curiosities at fix’d prices.
In taking a glance at the window, I recognized some of those I had formerly owned. So I stepped into the shop, resolved to repurchase them if the price were not too high. An involuntary exclamation escaped me! the shopkeeper was a young woman—in short, Mademoiselle Alexandrine de Saint Phar!
I was thunderstruck, and as immovable as one of my clay compatriots at my side: but the danseuse smiled charmingly, and without interrupting her embroidery work, she said with a sang froid sublime,
“Ah! good morning, dear doctor—you are very good to favor us so early with a visit—look around and see if you cannot find something here to your taste. Your god-daughter has the small-pox—she asks for her god-father every day—the dear little Dileri!”
I crossed my arms upon my breast and shook my head—a pantomime which I have remarked in a drama at the Theatre Ambigu means “what infamy!”
Mademoiselle cast a sidelong glance at me—shrugged her shoulders, and biting off a scarlet thread with her teeth, said—
“By the bye, dear doctor, I am married now—I have been a wife fifteen days—Madame Telamon, at your service. I will introduce you to my husband—a very handsome man—you would scarcely reach to his waist even if you raised yourself upon your toes. Hold! here he is!”