"Adieu, Gervais!"
I did not speak to Puck, or he would have followed me; as I was moving on I saw Puck looked uneasy and ashamed; he drew back a step, stretched out his paws, and bent down his head to the ground. I stroked his long silky coat, and with a slight pang at my heart, in which there was no feeling of anger, I said, so. He flew back to Gervais like an arrow. Gervais will not be alone at any rate, thought I.
A few days afterward I found myself at Milan. I was not in spirits for enjoying society, yet I did not altogether avoid mixing in it; a crowded room is, in its way, a vast solitude, unless you are so unfortunate a person as to stumble upon one of those never-tiring tourists whom you are in the habit of meeting occasionally on the Boulevards, at Tortoni's, or with whom you have gaped away an hour at Favert's, one of those dressed-up puppies with fashionable cravat and perfumed hair, who stare through an eye-glass, with the most perfect assurance imaginable, and talk at the highest pitch of their voice.
"What! are you here?" cried Roberville.
"Is it you?" replied I. He continued to chatter, but his words were unheeded by me, for my eyes suddenly fixed upon a young girl of extraordinary beauty; she was sitting alone, and leaning against a pillar in a kind of melancholy reverie.
"Ah! ah!" said Roberville, "I understand; your taste lies in that direction. Well, well, really in my opinion you show considerable judgment. I once thought of her myself, but now I have higher views."
"Indeed," replied I, as I gazed at him from head to foot, "you do not say so."
"Come, come," said Roberville, "I perceive your heart is already touched, you are occupied only with her; confess that it would have been a sad pity if those glorious black eyes had never been opened to the light."
"What do you mean?"
"What do I mean? why, that she was born blind. She is the daughter of a rich merchant of Anvers, and his only child; he lost his wife very young, and was plunged in consequence in the profoundest grief."