“Cleopatra!” I repeated, quietly. “Monsieur, too, has been looking at Cleopatra; what does he think of her?”

“ Cela ne vaut rien ,” he responded. “ Une femme superbe⁠—une taille d’impératrice, des formes de Junon, mais une personne dont je ne voudrais ni pour femme, ni pour fille, ni pour sœur. Aussi vous ne jeterez plus un seul coup d’oeil de sa côté. ” 114

“But I have looked at her a great many times while Monsieur has been talking; I can see her quite well from this corner.”

“Turn to the wall and study your four pictures of a woman’s life.”

“Excuse me, M. Paul; they are too hideous, but if you admire them, allow me to vacate my seat and leave you to their contemplation.”

“Mademoiselle,” he said, grimacing a half-smile, or what he intended for a smile, though it was but a grim and hurried manifestation. “You nurslings of Protestantism astonish me. You unguarded Englishwomen walk calmly amidst red-hot ploughshares and escape burning. I believe, if some of you were thrown into Nebuchadnezzar’s hottest furnace you would issue forth untraversed by the smell of fire.”

“Will Monsieur have the goodness to move an inch to one side?”

“How! At what are you gazing now? You are not recognising an acquaintance amongst that group of jeunes gens ?”

“I think so⁠—Yes, I see there a person I know.”