skinned almonds. Her hair—a trifle coarse, perhaps—was black, with blue lights on it like a raven’s wing, long and glossy. Not to weary my readers with too prolix a description, I will merely add, that to every blemish she united some advantage, which was perhaps all the more evident by contrast. There was something strange and wild about her beauty. Her face astonished you, at first sight, but nobody could forget it. Her eyes, especially, had an expression of mingled sensuality and fierceness which I had never seen in any other human glance. “Gipsy’s eye, wolf’s eye!” is a Spanish saying which denotes close observation. If my readers have no time to go to the “Jardin des Plantes” to study the wolf’s expression, they will do well to watch the ordinary cat when it is lying in wait for a sparrow.
It will be understood that I should have looked ridiculous if I had proposed to have my fortune told in a café. I therefore begged the pretty witch’s leave to go home with her. She made no difficulties about consenting, but she wanted to know what o’clock it was again, and requested me to make my repeater strike once more.
“Is it really gold?” she said, gazing