Samuel Brohl and Company | Page 8

the sons-in-law you could propose to me----"
"But I do not propose any."
"That is precisely what I find fault with."
"Very good; since you think so much of him, this Camille, suppose you
command me to marry him?"
"If I were to command, would you obey?"
"Perhaps, just for the curiosity of the thing," she rejoined, laughing.

"Naughty girl, to mock at her father!" said he. "If these twenty years I
have been in servitude, I can scarcely emancipate myself in a day.
However, since the great king deigns to hold parley with his ministers,
I am Pomponne--let us argue."
"Ah, well! you know as well as I that I have a real friendship for
Camille, as the playmate of my childhood. I remember him when he
was ever so small, and he remembers me, too, when I was a tiny
creature. We played hide-and-seek together, and he humoured me in
my ten thousand little caprices. Delightful reminiscences these, but
unfortunately I think of them too much when I see him."
"He has passed two years among the Magyars; two years is a good
while."
"Bah! he could never possibly have any authority over me. I intend that
my husband shall be my government."
"So that you may have the pleasure of governing your government?"
"Besides, I know Camille too well. I could only fall in love with a
stranger," said she, heedless of the last sally.
"Was not the Viscount R--- a stranger?"
"At the end of five minutes I knew him by heart. He is precisely like all
other second secretaries of legation in the world. You may be sure that
there is not a single idea in his head that is really his own. Even his
figure does not belong to himself; it is the chef-d'oeuvre of the united
efforts of his tailor and his shirt-maker."
"According to this, a prime requisite in the man whom you could love
is to be poorly clad."
"If ever my heart is touched, it will be because I have met a man who is
not like all the other men of my acquaintance. After that I will not
positively forbid him to have decent clothing."

M. Moriaz made a little gesture of impatience, and then set out to
regain the chaise, which was some distance in advance. When he had
proceeded about twenty steps, he paused, and, turning towards
Antoinette, who was engaged in readjusting her hood and rebuttoning
her twelve-button gloves, he said:
"I have drawn an odd number in the great lottery of this world. In our
day there are no romantic girls; the last remaining one is mine."
"That is it; I am a romantic girl!" she cried, tossing her pretty, curly
head with an air of defiance; "and if you are wise you will not urge me
to marry, for I never shall make any but an ineligible match."
"Ah, speak lower!" he exclaimed, casting a hurried glance around him,
and adding: "Thank Heaven! there is no one here but the Albula to hear
you."
M. Moriaz mistook. Had he raised his eyes a little higher he would
have discovered, above the rock cornice bordering the highway, a
foot-path, and in this foot-path a pedestrian tourist, who had paused
beneath a fir-tree. This tourist had set out from Chur in the diligence.
At the entrance of the defile, leaving his luggage to continue without
him to Saint Moritz, he had alighted, and with his haversack on his
back had set forward on foot for Bergun, where he proposed passing
the night, as did also M. Moriaz. Of the conversation between
Antoinette and her father he had caught only one word. This word,
however, sped like an arrow into his ear, and from his ear into the
innermost recesses of his brain, where it long quivered. It was a
treasure, this word; and he did not cease to meditate upon it, to
comment on it, to extract from it all its essence, until he had reached
the first houses of Bergun, like a mendicant who has picked up in a
dusty road a well-filled purse, and who opens it, closes it, opens it
again, counts his prize piece by piece, and adds up its value twenty
times over. Our tourist dined at the table d'hote; he was so preoccupied
that he ate the trout caught in the Albula without suspecting that they
possessed a marvellous freshness, an exquisite flavour and delicacy,
and yet it is notorious that the trout of the Albula are the first trout of
the universe.

Mlle. Moiseney, the duties of whose office consisted in serving as
chaperon to Mlle. Moriaz, was not a great genius. This worthy and
excellent personage had, in fact, rather a circumscribed mind, and she
had not the least suspicion of