Part 18 (1/2)

”As a Greek girl covers her head with sequins to show the amount of her fortune, and an English girl puts a rose in her hair for grace and beauty only,” said I, fancying that I had made rather a clever observation. I was therefore considerably disappointed when Dalrymple merely said, ”just so.”

The lady in the larger room here finished her song and returned to her seat, amid a shower of _bravas_.

”She sings exquisitely,” said I, following her with my eyes.

”And so she ought,” replied my friend. ”She is the Countess Rossi, whom you may have heard of as Mademoiselle Sontag.”

”What! the celebrated Sontag?” I exclaimed.

”The same. And the gentleman to whom she is now speaking is no less famous a person than the author of _Pelham_.”

I was as much delighted as a rustic at a menagerie, and Dalrymple, seeing this, continued to point out one celebrity after another till I began no longer to remember which was which. Thus Lamartine, Horace Vernet, Scribe, Baron Humboldt, Miss Bremer, Arago, Auber, and Sir Edwin Landseer, were successively indicated, and I thought myself one of the most fortunate fellows in Paris, only to be allowed to look upon them.

”I suppose the spirit of lion-hunting is an original instinct,” I said, presently. ”Call it vulgar excitement, if you will; but I must confess that to see these people, and to be able to write about them to my father, is just the most delightful thing that has happened to me since I left home.”

”Call things by their right names, Damon,” said Dalrymple, good-naturedly. ”If you were a _parvenu_ giving a party, and wanted all these fine folks to be seen at your house, that would be lion-hunting; but being whom and what you are, it is hero-wors.h.i.+p--a disease peculiar to the young; wholesome and inevitable, like the measles.”

”What have I done,” said a charming voice close by, ”that Captain Dalrymple will not even deign to look upon me?”

The charming voice proceeded from the still more charming lips of an exceedingly pretty brunette in a dress of light green silk, fastened here and there with bouquets of rosebuds. Plump, rosy, black-haired, bright-eyed, bewilderingly coquettish, this lady might have been about thirty years of age, and seemed by no means unconscious of her powers of fascination.

”I implore a thousand pardons, Madame....” began my friend.

”_Comment_! A thousand pardons for a single offence!” exclaimed the lady. ”What an unreasonable culprit!”

To which she added, quite audibly, though behind the temporary shelter of her fan:--

”Who is this _beau garcon_ whom you seem to have brought with you?”

I turned aside, affecting not to hear the question; but could not help listening, nevertheless. Of Dalrymple's reply, however, I caught but my own name.

”So much the better,” observed the lady. ”I delight in civilizing handsome boys. Introduce him.”

Dalrymple tapped me on the arm.

”Madame de Marignan permits me to introduce you, _mon ami_,” said he.

”Mr. Basil Arbuthnot--Madame de Marignan.”

I bowed profoundly--all the more profoundly because I felt myself blus.h.i.+ng to the eyes, and would not for the universe have been suspected of overhearing the preceding conversation; nor was my timidity alleviated when Dalrymple announced his intention of going in search of Madame de Courcelles, and of leaving me in the care of Madame de Marignan.

”Now, Damon, make the most of your opportunities,” whispered he, as he pa.s.sed by. ”_Vogue la galere_!”

_Vogue la galere_, indeed! As if I had anything to do with the _galere_, except to sit down in it, the most helpless of galley-slaves, and blindly submit to the gyves and chains of Madame de Marignan, who, regarding me as the lawful captive of her bow and spear, carried me off at once to a vacant _causeuse_ in a distant corner.

To send me in search of a footstool, to make me hold her fan, to overwhelm me with questions and bewilder me with a thousand coquetries, were the immediate proceedings of Madame de Marignan. A consummate tactician, she succeeded, before a quarter of an hour had gone by, in putting me at my ease, and in drawing from me everything that I had to tell--all my past; all my prospects for the future; the name and condition of my father; a description of Saxonholme, and the very date of my birth. Then she criticized all the ladies in the room, which only drew my attention more admiringly upon herself; and she quizzed all the young men, whereby I felt indirectly flattered, without exactly knowing why; and she praised Dalrymple in terms for which I could have embraced her on the spot had she been ten times less pretty, and ten times less fascinating.

I was an easy victim, after all, and scarcely worth the powder and shot of an experienced _franc-tireur;_ but Madame de Marignan, according to her own confession, had a taste for civilizing ”handsome boys,” and as I may, perhaps, have come under that category a good many years ago, the little victory amused her! By the time, at all events, that Dalrymple returned to tell me it was past one o'clock in the morning, and I must be introduced to the mistress of the house before leaving, my head was as completely turned as that of old Time himself.

”Past one!” I exclaimed. ”Impossible! We cannot have been here half-an hour.”