I was soon
undeceived. It was Antoinette. She loves to parade Carlotta
before her friends. I came upon her once entertaining an
admiring audience in Carlotta's presence with a detailed
description of that young woman's physical perfections--a
description which was marked by a singular lack of reticence.
The time of her glory is the bathing hour, when she accompanies
Carlotta from her cabin to the water's edge, divests her of
_peignoir_ and _espadrilles_, but before revealing her to
fashionable Etretat, casts a preliminary glance around, as who
should say: "Prepare all men and women for the dazzling goddess I
am about to unveil." Carlotta is undoubtedly bewitching in her
bathing costume, and enjoys a little triumph of beauty. People
fall into a natural group in order to look at her, while I,
sitting on a camp-stool in my white ducks and pink shirt and
smoking a cigarette, cannot repress a complacent pride of
ownership. I do not object to her flicking her wet fingers at me
when she comes dripping out of the sea; and I do not even
reproach her when she puts her foot upon my sartorially
immaculate knee, to show me a pebble-cut on her glistening pink
sole.
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