nspired me.

"If you can guess," she said, "how is it possible that you allow
yourself to speak to me in this way? But they were right when they said
you were ill-mannered; and yet I always had a wish to meet you."

"Really!" I said, with the same hideous grin. "You! A princess of the
king's highway, who have known so many men in your life? But let my
lips meet your own, my sweet, and you shall see if I am not as nicely
mannered as those uncles of mine whom you were listening to so willingly
just now."

"Your uncles!" she cried, suddenly seizing her chair and placing it
between us as if from some instinct of self-defence. "Oh, mon Dieu! mon
Dieu! Then I am not at Madame de Rochemaure's?"

"Our name certainly begins in the same way, and we come of as good a
rock as anybody."

"Roche-Mauprat!" she muttered, trembling from head to foot, like a hind
when it hears the howl of wolves.

And her lips grew quite white. Her agony was manifest in every gesture.
From an involuntary feeling of sympathy I shuddered myself, and I was on
the point of changing my manner and language forthwith.

"What can there be in this to astound her so?" I asked myself. "Is she
not merely acting a part? And even if the Mauprats are not hidden behind
some wainscot listening to us, is she not sure to give them an account
of everything that takes place? And yet she is trembling like an aspen
leaf. But what if she is acting? I once saw an actress play Genevieve de
Brabant, and she wept so that one might have been deceived."

I was in a state of great perplexity, and I cast harassed glances now at
her, now at the doors, which I fancied every moment would be thrown wide
open amid roars of laughter from my uncles.

This woman was beautiful as the day. I do not believe there has ever
lived a woman as lovely as she. It is not I alone who say so; she has
left a reputation for beauty which has not yet died out in her province.
She was rather tall, slender, and remarkable for the easy grace of her
movements. Her complexion was very fair, while her eyes were dark and
her hair like ebony. Her glance and her smile showed a union of goodness
and acuteness which it was almost impossible to conceive; it was as
if Heaven had given her two souls, one wholly of intellect, the other
wholly of feeling. She was naturally cheerful and brave--an angel,
indeed, whom the sorrows of humanity had not yet dared to touch. She
knew not what it was to suffer; she knew not w