There
are sphinx-like foreign ladies; we take a quantity of shawls to
their houses, and arrive at an understanding by flattery; but an
Englishwoman!--you might as well attack the bronze statue of Louis
Quatorze! That sort of woman turns shopping into an occupation, an
amusement. She quizzes us, forsooth!"

The romantic assistant came to the front.

"Does madame wish for real Indian shawls or French, something expensive
or----"

"I will see." (_Je veraie_.)

"How much would madame propose----"

"I will see."

The shopman went in quest of shawls to spread upon the mantle-stand,
giving his colleagues a significant glance. "What a bore!" he said
plainly, with an almost imperceptible shrug of the shoulders.

"These are our best quality in Indian red, blue, and pale orange--all at
ten thousand francs. Here are shawls at five thousand francs, and others
at three."

The Englishwoman took up her eyeglass and looked round the room with
gloomy indifference; then she submitted the three stands to the same
scrutiny, and made no sign.

"Have you any more?" (_Havaivod'hote_?) demanded she.

"Yes, madame. But perhaps madame has not quite decided to take a shawl?"

"Oh, quite decided" (_trei-deycidai_).

The young man went in search of cheaper wares. These he spread out
solemnly as if they were things of price, saying by his manner, "Pay
attention to all this magnificence!"

"These are much more expensive," said he. "They have never been worn;
they have come by courier direct from the manufacturers at Lahore."

"Oh! I see," said she; "they are much more like the thing I want."

The shopman kept his countenance in spite of inward irritation, which
communicated itself to Duronceret and Bixiou. The Englishwoman, cool as
a cucumber, appeared to rejoice in her phlegmatic humor.

"What price?" she asked, indicating a sky-blue shawl covered with a
pattern of birds nestling in pagodas.

"Seven thousand francs."

She took it up, wrapped it about her shoulders, looked in the glass, and
handed it back again.

"No, I do not like it at all." (_Je n'ame pouinte_.)

A long quarter of an hour went by in trying on other shawls; to no
purpose.

"This is all we have, madame," said the assistant, glancing at the
master as he spoke.

"Madame is fastidious, like all persons of taste," said the head of the
establishment, coming forward with that tradesman's suavity in which
pomposity is agreeably blended with subservience. The En