"My son," said he, "the fact of your being an Englishman who has studied in Buda-Pesth and speaks French like a Frenchman will entitle you to respect in the Quartier. Your previous acquaintance with me, on which you need not insist too much, will bring you distinction."
And so it turned out. I felt that around me also hung a little air of mystery, which was by no means unprofitable or unpleasant. To avoid complications, however, and also in order that I should have the freedom befitting my man's estate and my true education in the Quartier, Paragot threw me out of the nest in the Rue des Saladiers, and assigning to me a fixed allowance bade me seek my own shelter and make my way in the world.
I made it as best I could, and the months went on.
Why I should have been dreaming outside the Hôtel Bristol that afternoon, I cannot remember. If to Paragot Paris was the Boulevard Saint-Michel, to me it spread itself a vaster fairyland through which I loved to wander, and before whose magnificences I loved to dream. Why not dream therefore in the Place Vendôme? Surely my aspirations in those days soared as high as the Column, and surely the student's garb (beloved and ordained by Paragot)—the mushroom-shaped cap, the tight ankled, tight throated velveteens—rendered any eccentricity a commonplace. Early Spring too was in the air, which encourages the young visionary. Spruce young men and tripping modistes with bandboxes under their arms and the sun glinting over their trim bare heads hurried along through the traffic across the Place and landed on the pavement by my side. I must own to have been not unaffected by the tripping milliners. Why should they not weave themselves too into a painter lad's spring visions?
Suddenly a lady—of so radiant a loveliness as to send modistes packing from my head—emerged from the Hôtel Bristol and crossed the broad pavement to a waiting victoria. She had eyes like the blue of glaciers and the tenderest mouth in the world. She glanced at me. A floppy picturesque Paris student, lounging springlike in the Place Vendôme, is worth a fair lady's glance of curiosity. I raised my cap. She glanced at me again, haughtily; then again, puzzled; then stopped.
"If I don't know you, you are a very ill-bred young man to have saluted me," she said in French. "But I think I have seen you before."
"If I had not met you before I should not have bowed. You are the Comtesse de Verneuil," said I in English, very boyishly and eagerly. The spring and the sight of Joanna had sent the blood into my pasty cheeks.
"I once played the tambourine at Aix," I added.
She grew suddenly pale, put her hand to her heart and clutched at a bunch of Parma violets she was wearing. They fell to the ground.