y told half the truth. He might have remained
partly to dress, but also in the hope of seeing his beautiful neighbor,
of whom he had dreamed all the night, but in vain. He remained hidden
behind the curtains of his window: those of the young girl with the fair
hair and the beautiful black eyes remained closed. It is true that, in
exchange, he could perceive his neighbor, who, opening his door, passed
out, with the same precaution as the day before, first his hand, then
his head; but this time his boldness went no further, for there was a
slight fog, and fog is essentially contrary to the organization of the
Parisian bourgeois. Our friend coughed twice, and then, drawing in his
head and his arm, re-entered his room like a tortoise into his shell.
D'Harmental saw with pleasure that he might dispense with buying a
barometer, and that this neighbor would render him the same service as
the butterflies which come out in the sunshine, and remain obstinately
shut up in their hermitages on the days when it rains.
The apparition had its ordinary effect, and reacted on poor Bathilde.
Every time that D'Harmental perceived the young girl, there was in her
such a sweet attraction that he saw nothing but the woman--young,
beautiful, and graceful, a musician and painter--that is to say, the
most delicious and complete creature he had ever met. But when, in his
turn, the man of the terrace presented himself to the chevalier's gaze,
with his common face, his insignificant figure--that indelible type of
vulgarity which attaches to certain individuals--directly a sort of
miraculous transition took place in the chevalier's mind. All the poetry
disappeared, as a machinist's whistle causes the disappearance of a
fairy palace. Everything was seen by a different light. D'Harmental's
native aristocracy regained the ascendency. Bathilde was then nothing
but the daughter of this man--that is to say, a grisette: her beauty,
her grace, her elegance, even her talents, were but an accident--an
error of nature--something like a rose flowering on a cabbage-stalk. The
chevalier shrugged his shoulders as he stood before the glass, began to
laugh, and to wonder at the impression which he had received. He
attributed it to the preoccupation of his mind, to the strange and
solitary situation, to everything, in fact, except its true cause--the
sovereign and irresistible power of distinction and beauty. D'Harmental
went down to his hostess disposed to find the
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