My smile emboldened him. The poor fellow looked blindly about for his
hat; he seemed determined not to find it, and I handed it to him with
perfect gravity. His eyes were wet with unshed tears. It was a mere
passing moment, yet a world of facts and ideas were contained in it.
We understood each other so well that, on a sudden, I held out my hand
for him to kiss.
Possibly this was equivalent to telling him that love might bridge the
interval between us. Well, I cannot tell what moved me to do it.
Griffith had her back turned as I proudly extended my little white
paw. I felt the fire of his lips, tempered by two big tears. Oh! my
love, I lay in my armchair, nerveless, dreamy. I was happy, and I
cannot explain to you how or why. What I felt only a poet could
express. My condescension, which fills me with shame now, seemed to me
then something to be proud of; he had fascinated me, that is my one
excuse. Friday.
This man is really very handsome. He talks admirably, and has
remarkable intellectual power. My dear, he is a very Bossuet in force
and persuasiveness when he explains the mechanism, not only of the
Spanish tongue, but also of human thought and of all language. His
mother tongue seems to be French. When I expressed surprise at this,
he replied that he came to France when quite a boy, following the King
of Spain to Valencay.
What has passed within this enigmatic being? He is no longer the same
man. He came, dressed quite simply, but just as any gentleman would
for a morning walk. He put forth all his eloquence, and flashed wit,
like rays from a beacon, all through the lesson. Like a man roused
from lethargy, he revealed to me a new world of thoughts. He told me
the story of some poor devil of a valet who gave up his life for a
single glance from a queen of Spain.
"What could he do but die?" I exclaimed.
This delighted him, and he looked at me in a way which was truly
alarming. In the evening I went to a ball at the Duchesse de Lenoncourt's. The
Prince de Talleyrand happened to be there; and I got M. de Vandenesse,
a charming young man, to ask him whether, among the guests at his
country-place in 1809, he remembered any one of the name of Henarez.
Vandenesse reported the Prince's reply, word for word, as follows:
"Henarez is the Moorish name of the Soria family, who are, they say,
descendants of the Abencerrages, converted to Christianity. The old
Duke and his two sons were with the King. The eldest, the present Duke
de Soria, has just had all his property, titles, and dignities
confiscated by King Ferdinand, who in this way avenges a long-standing
feud. The Duke made a huge mistake in consenting to form a
constitutional ministry with Valdez. Happily, he escaped from Cadiz
before the arrival of the Duc d'Angouleme, who, with the best will in
the world, could not have saved him from the King's wrath."