“But if one is the brother of Nanette?” says Marcel still more gallantly.
Marcel has been in good company and flatters himself he has quite the bel air. As an apprentice to M. Panckoucke to learn the bookseller’s trade, wherein his sister, when he got old enough, was to set him up for himself, he had many opportunities of seeing and hearing the wits of the capital, not without profit to mind and manners. Indeed, he fairly considered himself one of them already.
“Yes, my dear little sister,” he added with a patronizing air, “you are positively the talk of the town. Go where I will—and you know I go into the best circles,” he says pompously, adjusting his ruffles as he has seen the dandies do—“I hear of nothing but the beautiful, the witty Nanette. Why, it was only the other day I was at M. de Marmontel’s”—the ingenuous youth did not deem it essential to state that he had been sent in the honorable though humble capacity of “printer’s devil” with a bundle of proofs for correction (the proofs, indeed, of the Contes Moraux: the dullest, surely—always excepting the delightful, interminable romances of the incomparable Mlle. de Scudéry—ever penned in the tongue of Montaigne and Molière,) but his sister understood his harmless vanity and did not so much as smile—“at M. de Marmontel’s with the Duke de Nivernais, the Count de Lauraguais, M. de Voltaire, and the Prince de Courtenaye.”
Nanette started slightly, but her brother did not perceive it. It is the way of brothers, and this brother, besides, was for the moment rapt in contemplation of the greatness reflected upon him by association with these great names. He fairly grew an inch in stature as he rolled them out, dwelling fondly on the titles. It is something to have a king speak to you, if only to ask you to get out of the way. Marcel continued:
“The talk was all of you. M. de Lauraguais, not knowing me to be your near relation, presumed to deny your wit and to question your virtue.”
Nanette’s beautiful eyes flashed in a way that would have made the slanderer uncomfortable had he seen it.
“Insolent!” she murmured, clenching her little fists.
“You may imagine how my blood boiled,” went on Marcel. “I was on the point of doing something rash when M. de Courtenaye took up the cudgels in your behalf. 'M. de Lauraguais,’ he said with grave severity, 'is it possible that you, a gentleman, can give currency to the lies set afloat by baffled libertines or malicious fools against the reputation of a defenceless girl? My life upon it, Nanette is as pure as she is lovely; and were proof of her innocence needed, I should ask none better than these stories of lovers whom no one has seen, or can even name. Why, had Nanette a lover, all Paris would ring with it in an hour.’ The impassioned earnestness of the prince made the company smile; but M. Diderot, siding with him, said he was sure you were better than the best that was said of you.”
Nanette’s eyes filled with tears. Had the youthful pedant been less intent on showing his familiarity with fashionable life, he must have had his suspicions aroused by her agitation. As it was, he was not even enlightened when Nanette, suddenly flinging her arms about his neck in a tender fury, kissed him twice or thrice passionately. He took the kisses complacently as a guerdon for his story. Fraternal obtuseness in such cases is simply limitless. “By the way, Nanette,” he added, “why wouldn’t it be a good idea to thank the prince by sending him some of your prettiest flowers? I can take them to-morrow with some books I am to convey to him.”
“Nonsense!” says Nanette incredulously. “I don’t believe you even know where he lives.”