The Beautiful Lady | Page 4

his heart. But
there is some difference: the Italian, the Frenchman, or German who
learns English sometimes misunderstands the American: the
Englishman he sometimes understands.
This voice that spoke was North-American. Ah, what a voice! Sweet as
the mandolins of Sorento! Clear as the bells of Capri! To hear it, was
like coming upon sight of the almond-blossoms of Sicily for the first
time, or the tulip-fields of Holland. Never before was such a voice!
"Why did you stop, Rufus?" it said.
"Look!" replied the American trousers; so that I knew the pongee lady
had not observed me of herself.
Instantaneously there was an exclamation, and a pretty grey parasol,
closed, fell at my feet. It is not the pleasantest to be an object which
causes people to be startled when they behold you; but I blessed the
agitation of this lady, for what caused her parasol to fall from her hand
was a start of pity.
"Ah!" she cried. "The poor man!"
She had perceived that I was a gentleman.
I bent myself forward and lifted the parasol, though not my eyes I could
not have looked up into the face above me to be Caesar! Two hands
came down into the circle of my observation; one of these was that

belonging to the trousers, thin, long, and white; the other was the
grey-gloved hand of the lady, and never had I seen such a hand--the
hand of an angel in a suede glove, as the grey skirt was the mantle of a
saint made by Doucet. I speak of saints and angels; and to the large
world these may sound like cold words.--It is only in Italy where some
people are found to adore them still.
I lifted the parasol toward that glove as I would have moved to set a
candle on an altar. Then, at a thought, I placed it not in the glove, but in
the thin hand of the gentleman. At the same time the voice of the lady
spoke to me--I was to have the joy of remembering that this voice had
spoken four words to me.
"Je vous remercie, monsieur," it said.
"Pas de quoi!" I murmured.
The American trousers in a loud tone made reference in the idiom to
my miserable head: "Did you ever see anything to beat it?"
The beautiful voice answered, and by the gentleness of her sorrow for
me I knew she had no thought that I might understand. "Come away. It
is too pitiful!"
Then the grey skirt and the little round-toed shoes beneath it passed
from my sight, quickly hidden from me by the increasing crowd; yet I
heard the voice a moment more, but fragmentarily: "Don't you see how
ashamed he is, how he must have been starving before he did that, or
that someone dependent on him needed--"
I caught no more, but the sweetness that this beautiful lady understood
and felt for the poor absurd wretch was so great that I could have wept.
I had not seen her face; I had not looked up --even when she went.
"Who is she?" cried a scoundrel voyous, just as she turned. "Madame
of the parasol? A friend of monsieur of the ornamented head?"
"No. It is the first lady in waiting to his wife, Madame la Duchesse,"

answered a second. "She has been sent with an equerry to demand of
monseigneur if he does not wish a little sculpture upon his dome as
well as the colour decorations!"
"'Tis true, my ancient?" another asked of me.
I made no repartee, continuing to sit with my chin dependent upon my
cravat, but with things not the same in my heart as formerly to the
arrival of that grey pongee, the grey glove, and the beautiful voice.
Since King Charles the Mad, in Paris no one has been completely free
from lunacy while the spring-time is happening. There is something in
the sun and the banks of the Seine. The Parisians drink sweet and fruity
champagne because the good wines are already in their veins. These
Parisians are born intoxicated and remain so; it is not fair play to
require them to be like other human people. Their deepest feeling is for
the arts; and, as everyone had declared, they are farceurs in their
tragedies, tragic in their comedies. They prepare the last epigram in the
tumbril; they drown themselves with enthusiasm about the alliance
with Russia. In death they are witty; in war they have poetic spasms; in
love they are mad.
The strangest of all this is that it is not only the Parisians who are the
insane ones in Paris; the visitors are none of them in behaviour as
elsewhere. You have only to go there to become as lunatic as the rest.
Many