"
She clasped herself pathetically and turned her great imploring
eyes on me.
"_Il faut souffrir pour etre belle_," I said.
"But with the figure of Mademoiselle, it is stupid!" cried
Antoinette.
"It is outrageous that I should be called upon to express an
opinion on such matters," I said, loftily. And so it was. My
assertion of dignity impressed them.
Then, with characteristic frankness, my young lady shakes out
before me things all frills, embroidery, ribbons, diaphaneity,
which the ordinary man only examines through shop-front windows
when a philosophic mood induces him to speculate on the
unfathomable vanity of woman.
"_Les beaux dessous!_" breathed Antoinette.
"The same ejaculation," I murmured, "was doubtless uttered by an
enraptured waiting-maid, when she beheld the stout linen smocks
of the ladies of the Heptameron."
I reflected on the relativity of things mundane. The waiting-
maid no doubt wore some horror made of hemp against her skin. If
Carlotta's gossamer follies had been thrown into the vagabond
court of the Queen of Navarre, I wonder whether those delectable
stories would have been written?
As Antoinette does not understand literary English, and as
Carlotta did not know what in the world I was talking about, I
was master of the conversational situation.
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