hinese love to paint on
screens, or, more exactly, to the Hindoo idols which seem to be imitated
from some non-existent type, found, nevertheless, now and again by
travelers. Esther shuddered as she looked at this monstrosity, dressed
out in a white apron over a stuff gown.

"Asie," said the Spaniard, to whom the woman looked up with a gesture
that can only be compared to that of a dog to its master, "this is your
mistress."

And he pointed to Esther in her wrapper.

Asie looked at the young fairy with an almost distressful expression;
but at the same moment a flash, half hidden between her thick,
short eyelashes, shot like an incendiary spark at Lucien, who, in a
magnificent dressing-gown thrown open over a fine Holland linen shirt
and red trousers, with a fez on his head, beneath which his fair hair
fell in thick curls, presented a godlike appearance.

Italian genius could invent the tale of Othello; English genius could
put it on the stage; but Nature alone reserves the power of throwing
into a single glance an expression of jealousy grander and more complete
than England and Italy together could imagine. This look, seen by
Esther, made her clutch the Spaniard by the arm, setting her nails in it
as a cat sets its claws to save itself from falling into a gulf of which
it cannot see the bottom.

The Spaniard spoke a few words, in some unfamiliar tongue, to the
Asiatic monster, who crept on her knees to Esther's feet and kissed
them.

"She is not merely a good cook," said Herrera to Esther; "she is a
past-master, and might make Careme mad with jealousy. Asie can do
everything by way of cooking. She will turn you out a simple dish of
beans that will make you wonder whether the angels have not come down to
add some herb from heaven. She will go to market herself every morning,
and fight like the devil she is to get things at the lowest prices; she
will tire out curiosity by silence.

"You are to be supposed to have been in India, and Asie will help you to
give effect to this fiction, for she is one of those Parisians who are
born to be of any nationality they please. But I do not advise that you
should give yourself out to be a foreigner.--Europe, what do you say?"

Europe was a perfect contrast to Asie, for she was the smartest
waiting-maid that Monrose could have hoped to see as her rival on the
stage. Slight, with a scatter-brain manner, a face like a weasel, and a
sharp nose, Europe's features offered to the