One of the young ladies stood facing the wall, and she was enjoined not to look behind her: an Austral lamp was placed upon a table at the bottom of the saloon, and there was no other light in the room. All the party then passed between the lamp and the person who stood with her face to the wall, so that their shadows fell upon the wall; the lady who stood with her face to it, was obliged to guess as each shadow passed whose it was.
Madame D’Hernilly’s daughters, and their young companions, exerted all their ingenuity to disguise their figures, that they might avoid being caught. At first they passed pretty quickly in succession, because they were not yet well acquainted with the game; but at the fifth or sixth game, when Madame D’Hernilly occupied the post facing the wall, they made use of all the little artifices they could think of to lead her into error. Ernestina, Adela, and Adriana, vied with each other in endeavours to disguise their shadows most effectually. Their postures were so whimsical, that Madame D’Hernilly could not succeed in discovering any one.
To increase the difficulties, they resolved to put a cheat upon her, and slily brought a young servant girl to take a part in the game without her knowledge. This girl presented herself at first with a gardener’s hat on; and presently afterwards, she put on the pouch and belt of the game-keeper, and clapped a villager’s cap upon her head. After that she crawled along upon her hands and feet with a postilion’s jack-boot upon her arms. Madame D’Hernilly was obliged to say that she “_threw her tongue to the dogs_.” This phrase is used to signify that you give up; and uncouth as it sounds in our language, Madame de Sevigné has condescended to employ it in one of her most sprightly letters[3].
They deliberated upon the penance which they should inflict upon Madame D’Hernilly; and they agreed that she should be obliged to embrace those of the company whom she loved best, and that she must do it without making the others jealous. She tenderly embraced her daughters and their young friends; and though her preference for her daughters was too natural to be doubted, they did not perceive that there was any difference in her manner of caressing them, and their companions. She therefore fulfilled the express condition of the penance, which was in fact a pleasure, rather than a penance to her.