He pointed to a lattice in one of the college boarding-houses.
"That," said he, "is a room I have hired, nominally for a study-- virtually for a post of observation. There I sit and read for hours together: it is my way--my taste. My book is this garden; its contents are human nature--female human nature. I know you all by heart. Ah! I know you well--St. Pierre, the Parisienne--cette maîtresse-femme, my cousin Beck herself."
"It is not right, Monsieur."
"Comment? it is not right? By whose creed? Does some dogma of Calvin or Luther condemn it? What is that to me? I am no Protestant. My rich father (for, though I have known poverty, and once starved for a year in a garret in Rome--starved wretchedly, often on a meal a day, and sometimes not that--yet I was born to wealth)--my rich father was a good Catholic; and he gave me a priest and a Jesuit for a tutor. I retain his lessons; and to what discoveries, grand Dieu! have they not aided me!"
"Discoveries made by stealth seem to me dishonourable discoveries."
"Puritaine! I doubt it not. Yet see how my Jesuit's system works. You know the St. Pierre?"
"Partially."
He laughed. "You say right--'partially'; whereas I know her thoroughly; there is the difference. She played before me the amiable; offered me patte de velours; caressed, flattered, fawned on me. Now, I am accessible to a woman's flattery--accessible against my reason. Though never pretty, she was--when I first knew her--young, or knew how to look young. Like all her countrywomen, she had the art of dressing--she had a certain cool, easy, social assurance, which spared me the pain of embarrassment--"
"Monsieur, that must have been unnecessary. I never saw you embarrassed in my life."
"Mademoiselle, you know little of me; I can be embarrassed as a petite pensionnaire; there is a fund of modesty and diffidence in my nature--"
"Monsieur, I never saw it."
"Mademoiselle, it is there. You ought to have seen it."
"Monsieur, I have observed you in public--on platforms, in tribunes, before titles and crowned heads--and you were as easy as you are in the third division."
"Mademoiselle, neither titles nor crowned heads excite my modesty; and publicity is very much my element. I like it well, and breathe in it quite freely;--but--but, in short, here is the sentiment brought into action, at this very moment; however, I disdain to be worsted by it. If, Mademoiselle, I were a marrying man (which I am not; and you may spare yourself the trouble of any sneer you may be contemplating at the thought), and found it necessary to ask a lady whether she could look upon me in the light of a future husband, then would it be proved that I am as I say--modest"