Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame | Page 2

during the remainder
of the evening's entertainment she should occupy herself more with her
neighbors than with the opera. She aroused M. Renard to a secret
ecstasy of mirth by the sharp steadiness of her observation of the
inmates of the box opposite to them. She talked about them, too, in a
tone not too well modulated, criticising the beautifully dressed little
woman, her hair, her eyes, her Greek nose and mouth, and, more than
all, her indifferent expression and her manner of leaning upon the edge
of her box and staring at the stage as if she did not care for, and indeed
scarcely saw, what was going on upon it.
"That is the way with your American beauties," she said. "They have
no respect for things. Their people spoil them--their men especially.
They consider themselves privileged to act as their whims direct. They
have not the gentle timidity of Frenchwomen. What French girl would
have the sang froid to sit in one of the best boxes of the Nouvelle
Opéra and regard, with an actual air of ennui, such a performance as
this? She does not hear a word that is sung."
"And we--do we hear?" bantered M. Renard.
"Pouf!" cried Madame. "We! We are world-dried and weather-beaten.

We have not a worm-eaten emotion between us. I am seventy, and you,
who are thirty-five, are the elder of the two. Bah I At that girl's age I
had the heart of a dove."
"But that is long ago," murmured M. Renard, as if to himself. It was
quite human that he should slightly resent being classed with an
unamiable grenadier of seventy.
"Yes!" with considerable asperity. "Fifty years!" Then, with harsh
voice and withered face melted suddenly into softness quite naïve,
"Mon Dieu!" she said, "Fifty years since Arsène whispered into my ear
at my first opera, that he saw tears in my eyes!"
It was at this instant that there appeared in the Villefort box a new
figure,--that of a dark, slight young man of graceful movements,--in
fact, a young man of intensely striking appearance. M. Villefort rose to
receive him with serious courtesy, but the pretty American was not so
gracious. Not until he had seated himself at her side and spoken to her
did she turn her head and permit her eyes simply to rest upon his face.
M. Renard smiled again.
"Enter," he remarked in a low tone,--"enter M. Ralph Edmondstone, the
cousin of Madame."
His companion asked no questions, but he proceeded, returning to his
light and airy tone:--
"M. Ralph Edmondstone is a genius," he said. "He is an artist, he is a
poet, he is also a writer of subtile prose. His sonnets to Euphrasie--in
the day of Euphrasie--awakened the admiration of the sternest critics:
they were so tender, so full of purest fire! Some of the same critics also
could scarcely choose between these and his songs to Aglæ in her day,
or Camille in hers. He is a young man of fine fancies, and possesses the
amiable quality of being invariably passionately in earnest. As he was
serious in his sentiments yesterday, so he will be to-morrow, so he is
to-day."

"To-day!" echoed Madame de Castro. "Nonsense!"
Madame Villefort did not seem to talk much. It was M. Ralph
Edmondstone who conversed, and that, too, with so much of the charm
of animation that it was pleasurable even to be a mere looker-on.
One involuntarily strained one's ears to catch a sentence,--he was so
eagerly absorbed, so full of rapid, gracefully unconscious and
unconventional gesture.
"I wonder what he is saying?" Madame de Castro was once betrayed
into exclaiming.
"Something metaphysical, about a poem, or a passage of music, or a
picture,--or perhaps his soul," returned M. Renard. "His soul is his
strong point,--he pets it and wonders at it. He puts it through its paces.
And yet, singularly enough, he is never ridiculous--only fanciful and
naïve. It is his soul which so fascinates women."
Whether this last was true of other women or not, Madame Villefort
scarcely appeared fascinated. As she listened, her eyes still rested upon
his eager mobile face, but with a peculiar expression,--an expression of
critical attention, and yet one which somehow detracted from her look
of youth, as if she weighed his words as they fell from his lips and
classified them, without any touch of the enthusiasm which stirred
within himself.
Suddenly she rose from her seat ana addressed her husband, who
immediately rose also. Then she spoke to M. Edmondstone, and
without more ado, the three left the box,--the young beauty, a little
oddly, rather followed than accompanied by her companions,--at the
recognition of which circumstance Madame de Castro uttered a series
of sharp ejaculations of disapproval.
"Bah! Bah!" she cried. "She is too