avel back to that episode of my
youth, I sometimes laugh at my own expense.

Suddenly, just as I was composing myself, at a turning in the green
walk, among a wilderness of flowers lighted up by a hot ray of sunlight,
I saw Juliette--Juliette and her husband. The pretty little girl
held her mother by the hand, and it was easy to see that the lady had
quickened her pace somewhat at the child's ambiguous phrase. Taken aback
by the sight of a total stranger, who bowed with a tolerably awkward
air, she looked at me with a coolly courteous expression and an adorable
pout, in which I, who knew her secret, could read the full extent of
her disappointment. I sought, but sought in vain, to remember any of the
elegant phrases so laboriously prepared.

This momentary hesitation gave the lady's husband time to come forward.
Thoughts by the myriad flitted through my brain. To give myself a
countenance, I got out a few sufficiently feeble inquiries, asking
whether the persons present were really M. le Comte and Mme. la
Comtesse de Montpersan. These imbecilities gave me time to form my own
conclusions at a glance, and, with a perspicacity rare at that age, to
analyze the husband and wife whose solitude was about to be so rudely
disturbed.

The husband seemed to be a specimen of a certain type of nobleman, the
fairest ornaments of the provinces of our day. He wore big shoes with
stout soles to them. I put the shoes first advisedly, for they made
an even deeper impression upon me than a seedy black coat, a pair of
threadbare trousers, a flabby cravat, or a crumpled shirt collar.
There was a touch of the magistrate in the man, a good deal more of the
Councillor of the Prefecture, all the self-importance of the mayor of
the arrondissement, the local autocrat, and the soured temper of the
unsuccessful candidate who has never been returned since the year 1816.
As to countenance--a wizened, wrinkled, sunburned face, and long, sleek
locks of scanty gray hair; as to character--an incredible mixture of
homely sense and sheer silliness; of a rich man's overbearing ways, and
a total lack of manners; just the kind of husband who is almost entirely
led by his wife, yet imagines himself to be the master; apt to domineer
in trifles, and to let more important things slip past unheeded--there
you have the man!

But the Countess! Ah, how sharp and startling the contrast between
husband and wife! The Countess was a little woman, with a flat, graceful