the terrace; therefore he closed his
window with a careless air, taking care to keep a little opening behind
the curtain, through which he could see without being seen. What he had
foreseen happened. Very soon the head of a charming young girl appeared
on the terrace; but as, without doubt, the ground, on which he had
ventured with so much courage, was too damp, she would not go any
further. The little dog, not less timid than its mistress, remained near
her, resting its white paws on the window, and shaking its head in
silent denial to every invitation. A dialogue was established between
the good man and the young girl, while D'Harmental had leisure to
examine her at ease.

She appeared to have arrived at that delicious time of life when woman,
passing from childhood to youth, is in the full bloom of sentiment,
grace, and beauty. He saw that she was not less than sixteen nor more
than eighteen years of age, and that there existed in her a singular
mixture of two races. She had the fair hair, thick complexion, and
graceful neck of an English woman, with the black eyes, coral lips, and
pearly teeth of a Spaniard.

As she did not use either rouge or white, and as that time powder was
scarcely in fashion, and was reserved for aristocratic heads, her
complexion remained in its natural freshness, and nothing altered the
color of her hair.

The chevalier remained as in an ecstasy--indeed, he had never seen but
two classes of women. The fat and coarse peasants of the Nivernais, with
their great feet and hands, their short petticoats, and their
hunting-horn shaped hats; and the women of the Parisian aristocracy,
beautiful without doubt, but of that beauty fagged by watching and
pleasure, and by that reversing of life which makes them what flowers
would be if they only saw the sun on some rare occasions, and the
vivifying air of the morning and the evening only reached them through
the windows of a hot-house. He did not know this intermediate type, if
one may call it so, between high society and the country people, which
had all the elegance of the one, and all the fresh health of the other.
Thus, as we have said, he remained fixed in his place, and long after
the young girl had re-entered, he kept his eyes fixed on the window
where this delicious vision had appeared.

The sound of his door opening called him out of his ecstasy: it was the
pate and the wine from Abbe Brigaud making their solemn entry into the
chevalier's ga