er women, and to tell them
so, for he so informed Marianne! He declared it by his smile, his
sparkling eyes, and the protecting bearing that he instinctively
manifested in the presence of this creature who glanced at him with
perfect composure.

In the confusion attending the attack on the buffet and in the presence
of the crowd that formed a half-circle round the minister, it was not
possible for him to commit himself too much; and the conversation,
half-drowned by the noise of voices, was carried on by fits and starts;
but in order to make themselves understood, Vaudrey and Marianne drew
nearer each other and found themselves occasionally almost pressed
against each other, so that the light breath of this woman and the scent
of new-mown hay that she exhaled, wafted over Sulpice's face. He looked
at her so admiringly that it was noticeable. She was laced in a light
blue satin gown that showed her rosy arms to the elbows, and her
shoulders gleamed with a rosy tint that suggested the rays of a winter
sun lighting up the pure snow. A singular animation, half-feverish,
beamed in her small, piercing, restless eyes, and her delicate ears with
their well-marked rims were quite red. The light that fell from the wax
candles imparted to her hair a Titian red tint as if she had bound her
locks with henna during the night. She was visibly assured of her power
and smiled with a strange and provoking air.

Vaudrey felt really much disturbed, he was attracted and half-angered by
this pretty girl with dilating nostrils who calmly swallowed her glass
of sherbet. He thought her at once exquisite and lovely, doubly charming
with her Parisian grace and in her ball costume, her bare flesh as
lustrous as mother-of-pearl under the brilliant light.

Her corsage was ornamented on the left side by an embroidered black
butterfly, with outstretched wings of a brownish, brilliant tint, and
Vaudrey, with a smile, asked her, without quite understanding what he
said, if it were an emblematic crest.

She smiled.

"Precisely," she replied. "What I wear in my corsage I have in my mind.
Black butterflies--or _blue devils_, as you choose."

"You are not exceptional," said Sulpice. "All women are such."

"All women in your opinion then, are a little--what is it called? a
little out of the perpendicular--or to speak more to the point, a little
queer, Monsieur le Ministre?"

The minister smiled in his turn, and looked at Marianne, whose eyes,
seen