The Duchess of Bracciano found
her glove. Adolphe, who had brought
her back to the orange grove, might
certainly have supposed that there
was some purpose in her forgetful-
ness, for at this moment the arbor
was deserted. The sound of the fes-
tivities was audible in the distance.
The puppet show that had been
promised had attracted all the
guests to the ballroom. Never had
Olympia looked more beautiful.
Her lover’s eyes met hers with an
answering glow, and they under-
stood each other. There was a mo-
ment of silence, delicious to their
souls, and impossible to describe.
They sat down on the same bench
where they had sat in the presence
of the Cavaliere Paluzzi and the
“Devil take it! Our Rinaldo has vanished!” cried Lousteau. “But a
literary man once started by this page would make rapid progress in
the comprehension of the plot. The Duchesse Olympia is a lady who could
intentionally forget her gloves in a deserted arbor.”
“Unless she may be classed between the oyster and head-clerk of an
office, the two creatures nearest to marble in the zoological kingdom,
it is impossible to discern in Olympia--” Bianchon began.
“A woman of thirty,” Madame de la Baudraye hastily interposed, fearing
some all too medical term.
“Then Adolphe must be two-and-twenty,” the doctor went on, “for an
Italian woman at thirty is equivalent to a Parisian of forty.”
“From these two facts, the romance may easily be reconstructed,” said
Lousteau. “And this Cavaliere Paluzzi--what a man!--The style is weak in
these two passages; the author was perhaps a clerk in the Excise Office,
and wrote the novel to pay his tailor!”
“In his time,” said Bianchon, “the censor flourished; you must show as
much indulgence to a man who underwent the ordeal by scissors in 1805 as
to those who went to the scaffold in 1793.”
“Do you understand in the least?” asked Madame Gorju timidly of Madame
de Clagny.
The Public Prosecutor’s wife, who, to use a phrase of Monsieur
Gravier’s, might have put a Cossack to flight in 1814, straightened
herself in her chair like a horseman in his stirrups, and made a face at
her neighbor, conveying, “They are looking at us; we must smile as if we
understood.”
“Charming!” said the Mayoress to Gatien. “Pray go on, Monsieur
Lousteau.”
Lousteau looked at the two women, two Indian idols, and contrived to
keep his countenance. He thought it desirable to say, “Attention!”
before going on as follows:--