hand, was looking at us, raising towards us a face powdered with pinkish
freckles. Her black eyes gleamed, and as I did not at that time know,
and indeed have never since learned how to reduce to its objective
elements any strong impression, since I had not, as they say, enough
'power of observation' to isolate the sense of their colour, for a long
time afterwards, whenever I thought of her, the memory of those bright
eyes would at once present itself to me as a vivid azure, since her
complexion was fair; so much so that, perhaps, if her eyes had not been
quite so black--which was what struck one most forcibly on first meeting
her--I should not have been, as I was, especially enamoured of their
imagined blue.

I gazed at her, at first with that gaze which is not merely a messenger
from the eyes, but in whose window all the senses assemble and lean out,
petrified and anxious, that gaze which would fain reach, touch, capture,
bear off in triumph the body at which it is aimed, and the soul with the
body; then (so frightened was I lest at any moment my grandfather and
father, catching sight of the girl, might tear me away from her, by
making me run on in front of them) with another, an unconsciously
appealing look, whose object was to force her to pay attention to me, to
see, to know me. She cast a glance forwards and sideways, so as to take
stock of my grandfather and father, and doubtless the impression she
formed of them was that we were all absurd people, for she turned away
with an indifferent and contemptuous air, withdrew herself so as to
spare her face the indignity of remaining within their field of
vision; and while they, continuing to walk on without noticing her, had
overtaken and passed me, she allowed her eyes to wander, over the space
that lay between us, in my direction, without any particular expression,
without appearing to have seen me, but with an intensity, a half-hidden
smile which I was unable to interpret, according to the instruction I
had received in the ways of good breeding, save as a mark of infinite
disgust; and her hand, at the same time, sketched in the air an
indelicate gesture, for which, when it was addressed in public to a
person whom one did not know, the little dictionary of manners which
I carried in my mind supplied only one meaning, namely, a deliberate
insult.

"Gilberte, come along; what are you doing?" called out in a piercing
tone of authority a lady in white, whom I had not s