THE SEAMY SIDE OF A GREAT MAN.
Numa Roumestan was twenty-two years old when he came to Paris to
complete the law studies which he had begun at Aix. At that time
he was a good enough kind of a fellow, light-hearted, boisterous,
full-blooded, with big, handsome, prominent eyes of a golden-brown
color and somewhat frog-like, and a heavy mop of naturally curling hair
which grew low on his forehead like a woollen cap without a visor.
There was not the shadow of an idea, not the ghost of an ambition
beneath that encroaching thatch of his. He was a typical Aix student,
a good billiard and card player, without a rival in his capacity for
drinking champagne and “going on the cat-hunt with torches” until three
o’clock in the morning through the wide streets of the old aristocratic
and Parliamentary town. But he was interested in absolutely nothing.
He never read a book nor even a newspaper, and was deep in the mire
of that provincial folly which shrugs its shoulders at everything and
hides its ignorance under a pretence of plain common-sense.
Arrived in Paris, the Quartier Latin woke him up a little, although
there was small reason for it. Like all his compatriots Numa installed
himself as soon as he arrived at the Café Malmus, a tall and noisy
barrack of a place with three stories of tall windows, as high as those
in a department shop, on the corner of the Rue Four Saint Germain.
It filled the street with the noise of billiard playing and the
vociferations of its clients, a regular horde of savages. The entire
South of France loomed and spread itself there; every shade of it!
Specimens of the southern French Gascon, the Provençal, the Bordeaux
man, the Toulousian and Marseilles man, samples of the Auvergnat
and Perigordian Southerner, him of Ariège, of the Ardèche and the
Pyrenees, all with names ending in “as,” “us” and “ac,” resounding,
sonorous and barbarous, such as Etcheverry, Terminarias, Bentaboulech,
Laboulbène--names that sounded as if hurled from the mouth of a
blunderbuss or exploded as from a powder mine, so fierce were the
ejaculations. And what shouts and wasted breath merely to call for a
cup of coffee; what resounding laughter, like the noise of a load of
stones shunted from a cart; what gigantic beards, too stiff, too black,
with a bluish tinge, beards that defied the razor, growing up into the
eyes and joining on to the eyebrows, sprouted in little tufts in the
broad equine nostrils and ears, but never able utterly to conceal the
youth and innocence of these good honest faces hidden beneath such
tropical growths.
When not at their lectures, which they attended conscientiously, these
students passed their entire time at Malmus’s, falling naturally into
groups according to their provinces or even their parishes, seated
around the same old tables handed down to them by tradition, which
might have retained the twang of their patois in the echoes of their
marble tops, just as the desks of school-rooms retain the initials
carved on them by school-boys.
Women in that company were few and far between, scarcely two or three
to a story, poor girls whom their lovers brought there in a shamefaced
way only to pass an evening beside them behind a glass of beer, looking
over the illustrated papers, silent and feeling very out of place
among these Southern youths who had been brought up to despise _lou
fémélan_--females. Mistresses? _Té!_ By Jove, they knew where to get
them whenever they wanted them for an hour or a night; but never for
long. Bullier’s ball and the “howlers” did not tempt them, nor the late
suppers of the _rôtisseuse_. They much preferred to stay at Malmus’s,
talk patois, and roll leisurely from the café to the schools and then
to the table d’hôte.
If they ever crossed the Seine it was to go to the Théâtre Français to
a performance of one of the old plays; for the Southerner always has
the classic thing in his blood. They would go in a crowd, talking and
laughing loudly in the street, though in reality feeling rather timid,
and then return silent and subdued, their eyes dazed by the dust of the
tragic scenes they had just witnessed, and with closed blinds and gas
turned low would have another game before they went to bed.
Sometimes, on the occasion of the graduation of one of their number,
an impromptu feed would make the whole house redolent of garlic stews
and mountain cheeses smelling strong and rotting nicely in their blue
paper wrappers. After his farewell dinner the new owner of a sheepskin
would take down from the rack the pipe that bore his initials and sally
forth to be notary or deputy in some far-away hole beyond the Loire,
there to talk to his friends in the provinces about Paris--Paris which
he thought he knew, but in which really he had never set his foot!
In this narrow local circle Numa readily assumed the eagle’s place.
To begin with, he shouted louder than the others, and then his music
was looked upon as a sign of superiority; at any rate there was some
originality in his very lively taste for music. Two or three times a
week he treated himself to a stall at the opera and when he came back
he overflowed with recitatives and arias, which he sang quite agreeably
in a pretty good throaty voice that rebelled against all cultivation.
When he strode into the Café Malmus in a theatrical manner, singing
some bit of Italian music as he passed the tables, peals of admiration
welcomed him: “Hello, old artist!” the boys would shout from every
gang. It was just like a club of ordinary citizens in this respect:
owing to his reputation as a musical artist all the women gave him
a warm look, but the men would use the term enviously and with a
suggestion of irony. This artistic fame did him good service later
when he came to power and entered public life. Even now the name of
Roumestan figures high on the list of all artistic commissions, plans
for popular operas, reforms in exhibitions of paintings proposed in
the Chamber of Deputies. All that was the result of evenings spent in
haunting the music-halls. He learned there self-confidence, the actor’s
pose, and a certain way of taking up a position three-quarters front
when talking to the lady at the cashier’s desk; then his wonder-struck
comrades would exclaim: “_Oh! de ce Numa, pas moins!_” (Oh, that Numa!
what a fellow he is!)
In his studies he had the same easy victory; he was lazy and hated
study and solitude, but he managed to pass his examination with no
little success through sheer audacity and Southern slyness, the slyness
which made him discover the weak spot in his professor’s vanity and
work it for all it was worth. Then his pleasant, frank expression and
his amiability were also in his favor, and it seemed as if a lucky star
lighted the pathway before him.
As soon as he obtained his lawyer’s diploma his parents sent for him
to return home, because the slender pocket money which he cost them
meant privations they could no longer bear. But the prospect of burying
himself alive in the old dead town of Aps crumbling to dust with its
ancient ruins, an existence composed of a humdrum round of visits and
nothing more exciting than a few lawsuits over a parcel of party-walls,
held out no inducements to that undefined ambition that the southern
youth vaguely felt underlying his love for the stir and intellectual
life of Paris.
With great difficulty he obtained an extension of two years more, in
which to complete his studies, and just as these two years had expired
and the irrevocable summons home had come, at the house of the Duchesse
de San Donnino he met Sagnier during a musical function to which he had
been asked on account of his pretty voice--Sagnier, the great Sagnier,
the Legitimist lawyer, brother of the duchess and a musical monomaniac.
Numa’s youthful enthusiasm appearing in the monotonous round of society
and his craze for Mozart’s music carried Sagnier off his feet. He
offered him the position of fourth secretary in his office. The salary
was merely nominal, but it was being admitted into the employment
of the greatest law office in Paris, having close relations with
the Faubourg Saint Germain and also with the Chamber of Deputies.
Unluckily old Roumestan insisted on cutting off his allowance, hoping
to force him to return when hunger stared him in the face. Was he not
twenty-six, a notary, and fit to earn his own bread? Then it was that
landlord Malmus came to the front.
A regular type was this Malmus; a large, pale-faced, asthmatic man,
who from being a mere waiter had become the proprietor of one of the
largest restaurants in Paris, partly by having credit, partly by usury.
It had been his custom in early days to advance money to the students
when they were in need of it, and then when their ships came in, allow
himself to be repaid threefold. He could hardly read and could not
write at all; his accounts were kept by means of notches cut in a
piece of wood, as he had seen the baker boys do in his native town
of Lyon; but he was so accurate that he never made a mistake in his
accounts, and, more than all, he never placed his money badly. Later,
when he had become rich and the proprietor of the house in which he
had been a servant for fifteen years, he established his business, and
placed it entirely upon a credit basis, an unlimited credit that left
the money-drawer empty at the close of the day but filled his queerly
kept books with endless lines of orders for food and drink jotted down
with those celebrated five-nibbed pens which are held in such sovereign
honor in the world of Paris trade.
And the honest fellow’s system was simplicity itself. A student kept
all his pocket money, all his allowance from home. All had full
credit for meals and drinks and favorites were even allowed a room in
his house. He did not ask for a penny during term time, letting the
interest mount up on very high sums. But he did not do this carelessly
or without circumspection. Malmus passed two months every year, his
vacation, in the provinces, making secret inquiry into the health and
wealth of the families of his debtors. His asthma was terrible as he
mounted the peaks of the Cévennes and descended the low ranges of
Languedoc. He was to be seen, gouty and mysterious, prowling about
among forgotten villages, with suspicious eyes lowering under the heavy
lids that are peculiar to waiters in all-night restaurants. He would
remain a few days in each place, interview the notary and the sheriff,
inspect secretly the farm or factory of his debtor’s father, and then
nothing was heard of him more.
What he learned at Aps gave him full confidence in Numa. The latter’s
father, formerly a weaver, had ruined himself with inventions and
speculations and lived now in modest circumstances as an insurance
agent, but his aunt, Mme. Portal, the childless widow of a rich town
councillor, would doubtless leave all her property to her nephew; so,
naturally, Malmus wished Numa to remain in Paris.
“Go into Sagnier’s office; I will help you.”
As a secretary of a man in Sagnier’s position he could not live in the
Quartier Latin, so Malmus furnished a set of bachelor chambers for
him on the Quai Voltaire, on the courts, paying the rent and giving
him his allowance on credit. Thus did the future leader face his
destiny, everything on the surface seemingly easy and comfortable,
but in reality in the direst need; lacking pin and pocket money. The
friendship of Sagnier helped him to fine acquaintances. The Faubourg
welcomed him. But this social success, the invitations in Paris and to
country houses in summer, where he had to arrive in perfect fashionable
outfit, only added to his expense. After repeated prayers his Aunt
Portal helped him a little, but with great caution and stinginess,
always accompanying her gifts with long flighty stupidities and
Bible denunciations against “that ruinous Paris.” The situation was
untenable.
At the end of a year he looked for other employment. Besides, Sagnier
required pioneers, regular navvies for hard work, and Roumestan was not
that sort of man. The Provençal’s indolence was ineradicable, and above
all things he had a loathing for office work or any hard and continuous
labor. The faculty of attention, which is nothing if not deep, was
absolutely wanting to this volatile Southerner. That was because his
imagination was too vivid, his ideas too jumbled-up beneath his dark
brows, his mind too fickle, as even his writing showed; it was never
twice the same. He was all on the surface, all voice, gestures, like a
tenor at the opera.
“When I am not speaking I cannot think,” he said naïvely, and it was
true. Words with him never rushed forth propelled by the force of his
thought; on the contrary, at the mechanical sound of his own words the
thoughts formed themselves in advance. He was astonished and amused at
chance meetings of words and ideas in his mind which had been lost in
some corner of his memory, thoughts which speech would discover, pick
up and marshal into arguments. Whilst he held forth he would suddenly
discover emotions of which he had been unconscious; the vibrations
of his own voice moved him to such a degree that there were certain
intonations which touched his heart and affected him to tears. These
were the qualities of an orator, to be sure, but he did not recognize
them, as his duties at Sagnier’s had hardly been such as to give him a
chance to practise them.
Nevertheless, the year spent with the great Legitimist lawyer had a
decisive effect upon his after life. He acquired convictions and a
political party, the taste for politics and a longing for fortune and
glory.
Glory came to him first.
A few months after he left his master, that title of “Secretary to
Sagnier,” which he clung to as an actor who has appeared once on the
boards of the Comédie Française forever calls himself “of the Comédie
Française,” was the means of getting him his first case, the defence of
a little Legitimist newspaper called “The Ferret,” much patronized in
the best society. His defence was cleverly and brilliantly made. Coming
into court without the slightest preparation, his hands in his pockets,
he talked for two hours with such an insolent “go” to him, and so much
good-natured sarcasm, that the judges were forced to listen to him to
the end. His dreadful southern accent, with its rolling “r’s,” which he
had always been too indolent to correct, seemed to make his irony only
bite the deeper. It had a power of its own, this eloquence with its
very Southern swing, theatrical and yet familiar, but above all lucid
and full of that broad light which is found in the works of people down
South, as in their landscapes, limpid to their remotest parts.
Of course the paper was non-suited; Numa’s success was paid for by
costs and imprisonment. So from the ashes of many a play that has
ruined manager and author one actor may snatch a reputation. Old
Sagnier, who had come to hear Numa plead, embraced his pupil before
the assembled crowd. “Count yourself from this day on a great man, my
dear Numa!” said he, and seemed surprised that he had hatched such a
falcon’s egg. But the most surprised man was Numa himself, as with the
echo of his own words still sounding in his ears he descended the broad
railless staircase of the Palais de Justice, quite stunned, as if in a
dream.
After this success and this ovation, after showers of eulogistic
letters and the jaundiced smiles of his brethren, the coming lawyer
naturally felt he was indeed launched upon a triumphal career. He sat
patiently waiting in his office looking out on the courtyard, before
his scanty little fire; but nothing came save a few more invitations to
dinner, and a pretty bronze from the foundry of Barbédienne, a donation
from the staff of _Le Furet_.
The new great man found himself still facing the same difficulties,
the same uncertain future. Oh! these professions called liberal, which
cannot decoy and entrap their clients, how hard are their beginnings,
before serious and paying customers come to sit in rows in their little
rooms furnished on credit with dilapidated furniture and the symbolical
clock on the chimney-piece flanked by tottering candelabra! Numa was
driven to giving lessons in law among his Catholic and Legitimist
acquaintances; but he considered work like this beneath the dignity
of the man whose name had been so covered with glory by the party
newspapers.
What mortified him most of all and made him feel his wretched plight
was to be obliged to go and dine at Malmus’s when he had no invitation
elsewhere, and no money for a dinner at a fashionable restaurant.
Nothing had changed at Malmus’s; the same cashier’s lady was enthroned
among the punch-bowls as of old; the same pottery stove rumbled away
near the old pipe-rack; the same shouts and accents, the same black
beards from every section of the South prevailed; but his generation
had passed, and he looked on the new generation with the disfavor which
a man at maturity, but without a position, feels for the youths who
make him seem old.
How could he have existed in so brainless a set? Surely the students of
his day could not have been such fools! Even their admiration, their
fawning round him like a lot of good-natured dogs, was insupportable to
him.
While he ate, Malmus, proud of his guest, came and sat on the little
red sofa which shook under his fits of asthma, and talked to him, while
at a table near by a tall, thin woman took her place, the only relic
of the old days left--a bony creature destitute of age known in the
quarter as “everyone’s old girl.” Some kind-hearted student now married
and settled far away had opened a credit for her at Malmus’s before
he went. Confined for so many years to this one pasture, the poor
creature knew nothing of what was going on in the outside world; she
had not even heard of Numa’s triumph, and spoke to him pityingly as to
one whom fortune had passed by, and in the same rank and category as
herself.
“Well, poor old chum, how are things a-getting on? You know Pompon is
married, and Laboulbène has passed his deputy at Caen.”
Roumestan hardly answered a word, hurried through his dinner and rushed
away through the streets, noisy with many beershops and fruit stalls,
feeling the bitterness of a life of failure and a general impression of
bankruptcy.
Several years passed thus, during which his name became better known
and more firmly established, but with little profit to himself, except
for an occasional gift of a copy of some statuette in Barbédienne
bronze. Then he was called upon to defend a manufacturer of Avignon,
who had made seditious silk handkerchiefs. There was some sort of a
deputation pictured on them standing about the Comte de Chambord, but
very confusedly done in the printing, only with great imprudence he had
allowed the initials “H. V.” (Henry Fifth) to be left, surrounded by a
coat of arms.
Here was Numa’s chance for a good bit of comedy. He thundered against
the stupidity that could see the slightest political allusion in that
H. V.! Why, that meant Horace Vernet--there he was, presiding over a
meeting of the French Institute!
This “tarasconade” had a great local success that did him more service
than any advertisement won in Paris could; above all, it gained him the
active approbation of his Aunt Portal. At first this was expressed
by presents of olive oil and white melons, followed by a lot of other
articles of food--figs, peppers, potted ducks from Aix, caviar from
Martigues, jujubes, elderberry jam and St. John’s-bread, a lot of
boyish goodies of which the old lady herself was very fond, but which
her nephew threw into a cupboard to spoil.
Shortly after arrived a letter, written with a quill in a large
handwriting, which displayed the brusque accents and absurd phrases
customary with his aunt, and betrayed her puzzle-headed mind by its
absolute freedom from punctuation and by the lively way in which she
jumped from one subject to the other.
Still, Numa was able to discover the fact that the good woman desired
to marry him off to the daughter of a Councillor in the Court of
Appeals in Paris, one M. Le Quesnoy, whose wife, a Mlle. Soustelle
from Aps, had gone to school with her at the Convent of la Calade--big
fortune--the girl handsome, good morals, somewhat cool and haughty--but
marriage would soon warm that up. And if the marriage took place, what
would his old Aunt Portal give her Numa? One hundred thousand francs in
good clinking tin--on the day of the wedding!
Under its provincialisms the letter contained a serious proposition, so
serious indeed that the next day but one Numa received an invitation to
dine with the Le Quesnoys. He accepted, though with some trepidation.
The Councillor, whom he had often seen at the Palais de Justice, was
one of those men who had always impressed him most. Tall, slender,
with a haughty face and a mortal paleness, sharp, searching eyes, a
thin-lipped, tightly-closed mouth--the old magistrate, who originally
came from Valenciennes, seemed like that town to be surrounded by an
impregnable wall and fortified by Vauban. His cool Northern manner
was most disconcerting to Numa. His high position, gained by his
exhaustive study of the Penal Code, his wealth and his spotless life
would have given him a yet higher position had it not been for the
independence of his views and a morose withdrawal from the world and
its gayeties ever since the death of his only son, a lad of twenty. All
these circumstances passed before Numa’s mental vision as he mounted
the broad stone steps with their carved hand-rail of the Le Quesnoy
residence, one of the oldest houses on the Place Royale.
The great drawing-room into which he was shown, with its lofty ceiling
reaching down to the doors to meet the delicate paintings of its piers,
the straight hangings with stripes in brown and gold-colored Chinese
silk framing the long windows that opened upon an antique balcony,
and also on one of the rose-colored corners of brick buildings on the
square--all this was not calculated to change his first impressions.
But the welcome given him by Mme. Le Quesnoy soon put him at his ease.
This fragile little woman with her sad sweet smile, wrapped in many
shawls and crippled by rheumatism, from which she had suffered ever
since she came to live in Paris, still preserved the accent and habits
of her dear South, and she loved anything that reminded her of it.
She invited Numa to sit down by her side, and looking affectionately
at him in the dim light, she murmured: “The very picture of Evelina!”
This pet name of his aunt, so long unheard by him, touched his quick
sensibility like an echo of his childhood. It appeared that Mme. Le
Quesnoy had long wished to know the nephew of her old friend, but her
house had been so mournful since her son’s death, and they had been so
entirely out of the world, that she had never sought him out. Now they
had decided to entertain a little, not because their sorrow was less
keen, but on account of their two daughters, the eldest of whom was
almost twenty years old; and turning toward the balcony whence they
could hear peals of girlish laughter, she called, “Rosalie, Hortense,
come in--here is Monsieur Roumestan!”
Ten years after that visit Numa remembered the calm and smiling picture
that appeared, framed by the long window in the tender light of the
sunset, of that beautiful young girl, and the absence of all affected
embarrassment as she came towards him, smoothing the bands of her hair
that her little sister’s play had ruffled--her clear eyes and direct
gaze.
He felt an instant confidence in and sympathy with her.
Once or twice during dinner, nevertheless, when he was in the full
flow of animated conversation he was conscious that a ripple as of
disdain passed over the clear-cut profile and pure complexion of the
face beside him--without question that “cool and haughty” air which
Aunt Portal had mentioned, and which Rosalie got through her striking
resemblance to her father. But the little grimace of her pretty mouth
and the cold blue of her look softened quickly to a kindly attention,
and she was again under the charm of a surprise she did not try to
conceal. Born and brought up in Paris, Rosalie had always felt a fixed
aversion to the South; its accent, its manners, even the country
itself as she saw it in the vacations she occasionally spent at
Aps--everything was antipathetic to her. It seemed to be an instinct of
race, and was the cause of many gentle disputes with her mother.
“Nothing would induce me to marry a Southerner,” Rosalie had laughingly
declared, and she arranged in her own mind a type--a coarse, noisy,
vacant fellow, combining an opera tenor and a drummer for Bordeaux
wines, but with a fine head and well-cut features. Roumestan came
pretty near to this clear-cut vision of the mocking little Parisian,
but his ardent musical speech, taking on that evening an irresistible
force by reason of the sympathy of those around him, inspired and
aroused him, seeming even to make his face more refined. After the
usual talk in low voices between neighbors at the table, those
_hors-d’œuvres_ of conversation that circulate with caviar and
anchovy, the Emperor’s hunting parties at Compiègne became the general
topic of conversation; those hunts in costume at which the invited
guests appeared as grandees and grand ladies of the Court of Louis
XV. Knowing M. Le Quesnoy to be a Liberal, Numa launched forth into a
magnificent diatribe, almost a prophetic one. He drew a picture of the
Court as a set of circus riders, women performers, grooms and jockeys
riding hard under a threatening sky, pursuing the stag to its death to
the accompaniment of lightning-flash and distant claps of thunder, and
then--in the midst of all this revelry--the deluge, the hunting horns
drowned, all this monarchical harlequinade ending in a morass of blood
and mire!
Perhaps this piece was not entirely impromptu; probably he had got
it off before at the committee meeting; but never before had his
brilliant speech and tone of candor in revolt roused anywhere such
enthusiasm and sympathy as he suddenly saw reflected in one sweet,
serious countenance, that he felt turning toward him, while the gentle
face of Mme. Le Quesnoy lit up with a ray of fun and seemed to ask her
daughter: “Well, how do you like my Southerner now?”
Rosalie was captivated. Deep in her inmost heart she bowed to the power
of that voice and to generous thoughts that accorded so well with all
her youthful enthusiasms, her passion for liberty and justice. As women
at a play will confound the singer with his song, the actor with his
_rôle_, so she forgot to make allowances for the artist’s imagination.
Oh, if she could but have known what an abyss of nothing lay below
these professional phrases, how little he troubled himself about the
hunting-parties at Compiègne! She did not know that he merely needed
an invitation with the imperial crest on it, and he would have joined
these self-same parties, in which his vanity, his tastes as actor and
pleasure-seeker, would have found complete satisfaction. But she was
under the charm. As he talked, it seemed to her the table grew larger,
the dull, sleepy faces of the few guests, a certain President of the
Chamber and an old physician, were transfigured; and when they returned
to the drawing-room, the chandelier, lighted for the first time since
her brother’s death, had almost the dazzling effect upon her of the sun
itself.
The sun was Roumestan.
He woke up the majestic old house, drove away mourning and the gloom
that was piled in all the corners, the particles of sadness that
accumulate in old dwellings; he seemed to make the facets of the
mirrors glisten and give new life to the delightful panel paintings on
the walls, which had been scarce visible for a hundred years.
“Are you fond of painting, Monsieur?”
“Fond of it, Mademoiselle? Oh, I should think so!”
The truth was that he knew absolutely nothing about it, but he had a
stock of words and phrases ready for use on that subject as on all
others, and while the servants were arranging the card tables he made
the paintings on the well-preserved Louis XIII walls the pretext for a
quiet talk very near to the young girl.
Of the two, Rosalie knew much the more about art. Having lived always
in an atmosphere of cultivation and good taste, the sight of a fine bit
of sculpture or a great painting thrilled her with a special vibratory
emotion which she felt rather than expressed, because of her reserved
character and because the false emotions in the world are apt to keep
down the real ones. At sight of them a superficial observer, however,
noting the eloquent assurance with which the lawyer talked and the
wide professional gestures he used, as well as the rapt attention of
Rosalie, might have taken him for some great master giving a lesson to
a pupil.
“Mamma, can we go into your room? I want to show Monsieur Roumestan the
hunting panel.”
At the whist table Mme. Le Quesnoy gave a quick inquiring glance at
him whom she always called, with a peculiar tone of renunciation
and humility in her voice, “Monsieur Le Quesnoy,” and, receiving an
affirmative nod from him which meant that the thing was in order, gave
the desired permission.
They crossed a passage lined with books and found themselves in the
old people’s chamber, an immense room as majestic and antique as the
drawing-room. The panel was above a small door beautifully carved.
“It is too dark to see it well,” said Rosalie.
As she spoke she held up a double candlestick she had taken from
a card table, and with her arm raised, her graceful figure in fine
relief, she threw the light upon the picture which showed Diana, the
crescent on her brow, among her huntress maidens in the landscape of a
pagan Paradise. But at this gesture of a Greek torch-bearer the light
from the double candles fell upon her own head with its simple coiffure
and sparkled in her clear eyes with their high-bred smile and on the
virginal curves of her slender yet stately bust. She seemed more of
a Diana than the pictured goddess herself. Roumestan looked at her;
carried away by her charm of youthful innocence and candid chastity,
he forgot who she was and what his purpose had been in coming, yes,
all his dreams of fortune and ambition! He felt an insane desire to
clasp this supple form in his arms, to shower kisses on her fine hair,
the delicate fragrance of which intoxicated him, to carry off this
enchanting being to be the safeguard and joy of his whole life; and
something told him that if he attempted it she would permit it, and
that she was his, his entirely, conquered, vanquished at the first
sight.
Fire and wind of the South, you are irresistible!