“Yes.”
“Could he not have come for you?”
“No; he is M. Dornthal’s head clerk, and it is very difficult for him to leave his post.”
Fleurange’s heart gave a leap at this name. “Are you alluding to M. Ludwig Dornthal?” said she.
“No; to his brother, the rich banker.”
“And the other—the professor—do you know him?”
“I have never seen him, but Wilhelm is well acquainted with him, and is sometimes invited to the soirées he gives. They are not balls—they are not fond of dancing there—but réunions for conversation, reading, music, and looking at engravings. Wilhelm says they are all learned, the girls as well as the boys, and madame as much so as her husband.”
Fleurange slightly shuddered at this brief communication respecting her uncle’s family. She was very fond of study, still more so of the arts; she had a taste for reading she was often obliged to repress, but this word “learned” she did not find attractive.
“Learned!” she said to herself. “That means pedantic, grave, and tiresome. Well, I must make the best of it. Perhaps that does not prevent them from being good, which is the essential point, and I certainly should not aim at amusement in this short life.”
Another night—another long day