Villette

was an error to fear him: nothing drove him so nearly frantic as the tremor of an apprehensive and distrustful spirit; nothing soothed him like confidence tempered with gentleness. To evince these sentiments, however, required a thorough comprehension of his nature; and his nature was of an order rarely comprehended.
    »How did you get on with Marie Broc?« he asked, after some minutes' silence.
    »Monsieur, I did my best; but it was terrible to be alone with her!«
    »You have, then, a weak heart! You lack courage; and, perhaps, charity. Yours are not the qualities which might constitute a Sister of Mercy.«
    (He was a religious little man, in his way: the self-denying and self-sacrificing part of the Catholic religion commanded the homage of his soul.)
    »I don't know, indeed: I took as good care of her as I could; but when her aunt came to fetch her away, it was a great relief.«
    »Ah! you are an egotist. There are women who have nursed hospitals-full of similar unfortunates. You could not do that?«
    »Could Monsieur do it himself?«
    »Women who are worthy the name ought infinitely to surpass our coarse, fallible, self-indulgent sex, in the power to perform such duties.«
    »I washed her, I kept her clean, I fed her, I tried to amuse her; but she made mouths at me instead of speaking.«
    »You think you did great things?«
    »No; but as great as I
could
do.«
    »Then limited are your powers, for in tending one idiot, you fell sick.«
    »Not with that, monsieur; I had a nervous fever: my mind was ill.«
    »Vraiment! Vous valez peu de chose. You are not cast in an heroic mould; your courage will not avail to sustain you in solitude; it merely gives you the temerity to gaze with sang-froid at pictures of Cleopatra.«
    It would have been easy to show anger at the teasing, hostile tone of the little man. I had never been angry with him yet, however, and had no present disposition to begin.
    »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' œil de sa côté.«
    »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 recognizing an acquaintance amongst that group of jeunes gens?«
    »I think so –– Yes, I see there a person I know.«
    In fact, I had caught a glimpse of a head too pretty to belong to any other than the redoubted Colonel de Hamal. What a very finished, highly-polished little pate it was! What a figure, so trim and natty! What womanish feet and hands! How daintily he held a glass to one of his optics! with what admiration he gazed upon the Cleopatra! and then, how engagingly he tittered and whispered a friend at his elbow! Oh, the man of sense! Oh, the refined gentleman of superior taste and tact! I observed him for about ten minutes, and perceived that he was exceedingly taken with this dusk and portly Venus of the Nile. So much was I interested in his bearing, so absorbed in divining his character by his looks and movements, I temporarily forgot M. Paul; in the interim a group came between that gentleman and me; or possibly his scruples might have received another and worse shock from my present abstraction, causing him to withdraw voluntarily: at any rate, when I again looked round, he was gone.
    My eye, pursuant of the search, met not him, but another and dissimilar figure, well seen amidst the crowd, for the height as well as the port lent each its distinction. This way came Dr. John, in visage, in shape, in hue, as unlike