glishwoman
took up her eyeglass and scanned the manufacturer from head to foot,
unwilling to understand that the man before her was eligible for
Parliament and dined at the Tuileries.

"I have only one shawl left," he continued, "but I never show it. It is
not to everybody's taste; it is quite out of the common. I was thinking
of giving it to my wife. We have had it in stock since 1805; it belonged
to the Empress Josephine."

"Let me see it, monsieur."

"Go for it," said the master, turning to a shopman. "It is at my house."

"I should be very much pleased to see it," said the English lady.

This was a triumph. The splenetic dame was apparently on the point of
going. She made as though she saw nothing but the shawls; but all
the while she furtively watched the shopmen and the two customers,
sheltering her eyes behind the rims of her eyeglasses.

"It cost sixty thousand francs in Turkey, madame."

"Oh!" (_hau_!)

"It is one of seven shawls which Selim sent, before his fall, to the
Emperor Napoleon. The Empress Josephine, a Creole, as you know, my
lady, and very capricious in her tastes, exchanged this one for another
brought by the Turkish ambassador, and purchased by my predecessor;
but I have never seen the money back. Our ladies in France are not rich
enough; it is not as it is in England. The shawl is worth seven thousand
francs; and taking interest and compound interest altogether, it makes
up fourteen or fifteen thousand by now--"

"How does it make up?" asked the Englishwoman.

"Here it is, madame."

With precautions, which a custodian of the Dresden _Grune Gewolbe_
might have admired, he took out an infinitesimal key and opened a square
cedar-wood box. The Englishwoman was much impressed with its shape and
plainness. From that box, lined with black satin, he drew a shawl worth
about fifteen hundred francs, a black pattern on a golden-yellow ground,
of which the startling color was only surpassed by the surprising
efforts of the Indian imagination.

"Splendid," said the lady, in a mixture of French and English, "it
is really handsome. Just my ideal" (_ideol_) "of a shawl; it is very
magnificent." The rest was lost in a madonna's pose assumed for the
purpose of displaying a pair of frigid eyes which she believed to be
very fine.

"It was a great favorite with the Emperor Napoleon; he took----"

"A great favorite," repeated she with her English accent. Then she
arranged the shawl about her shoulder