"So much the better, then; for thus if his Eminence gets news of my whereabouts, the news will not awaken his ever-ready suspicions. Ciel! How beautiful she is! Noted you her eyes, her skin, and what hair, mon Dieu! Like threads of gold!"
"Like threads of gold?" I echoed. "You are dreaming, boy. Oh, St. Gris! I understand; you are speaking of the fair-haired chit that was with her."
He eyed me in amazement.
"'T is you whose thoughts are wandering to that lanky, nose-in-the-air Madame who accompanied her."
I began a laugh that I broke off suddenly as I realised that it was not Yvonne after all who had imprisoned his wits. The Cardinal's plans were, indeed, likely to miscarry if he persisted thus.
"But 't was the nose-in-the-air Madame, as you call her, with whom you spoke!"
"Aye, but it was the golden-haired lady that held my gaze. Pshaw! Who would mention them in a breath?"
"Who, indeed?" said I, but with a different meaning.
Thereafter, seeing him listless, I suggested a turn in the village to stretch our limbs before dining. But he would have none of it, and when I pressed the point with sound reasoning touching the benefits which health may cull from exercise, he grew petulant as a wayward child. She might descend whilst he was absent. Indeed, she might require some slight service that lay, perchance, in his power to render her. What an opportunity would he not lose were he abroad? She might even depart before we returned; and than that no greater calamity could just then befall him. No, he would not stir a foot from the inn. A fig for exercise! to the devil with health! who sought an appetite? Not he. He wished for no appetite--could contrive no base and vulgar appetite for food, whilst his soul, he swore, was being consumed by the overwhelming, all-effacing appetite to behold her.
Such meandering fools are most of us at nineteen, when the heart is young--a flawless mirror ready to hold the image of the first fair maid that looks into it through our eyes, and as ready--Heaven knows!--to relinquish it when the substance is withdrawn.
But I, who was not nineteen, and the mirror of whose heart--to pursue my metaphor--was dulled, warped, and cracked with much illusage, grew sick of the boy's enthusiasm and the monotony of a conversation which I could divert into no other channel from that upon which it had been started by a little slip of a girl with hair of gold and sapphire eyes--I use Andrea's words. And so I rose, and bidding him take root in the tavern, if so it pleased his fancy, I left him there.