"But is it fickleness, _mon colonel_, to like what belongs to the Contesse d'Hivry?" inquired Lisa, lowering her eyes with assumed _naïveté_.
"For you, yes. I should say that it was. But I dare say, with your little malicious airs, mademoiselle, you mean more than that. But I advise you to wear roses on the right side for Ulysse, and then tell him that he must never leave me; and he shall not, I give you my word," said Victor, gayly, taking up his hat and gloves and moving to the door. "What a lucky thing," he continued to himself as he descended the stair-case, "that the charming countess only asks for a pedestrian cavalier! If she had asked for a mounted escort, I should have been forced to have recourse to this tiresome baron here," and Victor brushed lightly against the door of a fellow-lodger, "to have used his stumbling horse, and then to have been bored for the rest of my life, or of his life, about helping him to the cross of the Legion of Honor."
The baron in question was a retired _militaire_, who, inspired with an insatiable thirst for fame, was writing a military history of France. His chief claims to notice appeared to be the possession of a stumbling horse, and an overwhelming greed of decorations.
As Victor mused over the consequences of an incautious acceptance of the baron's steed, and over the base intrigues in which a pursuit of the coveted cross might involve him, his brow darkened, and his step grew heavier.
The drawing-room of the Contesse d'Hivry was a comfortable, social-looking apartment, though with too great abandon in the matter of furniture and decorations, to claim to be a model of any particular epoch. The well-polished floors and numerous mirrors reflected back the sun's rays, which sometimes penetrated through the fragrant vines shading the windows. Bright oriental rugs were at the feet of yellow damask ottomans, and the etagères and tables were covered with rare bronzes, costly bits of porcelain, alabaster, and goblets of crystal. But the appointments of the room seemed never so complete as when the countess herself was seated in the embrasure of one of the windows, as she was on this occasion, working at her embroidery or her aquarelles. Mathilde d'Hivry enjoyed the deserved reputation of being irresistibly charming. She was nothing in excess. She was not very young, nor very rich, nor very handsome, nor very clever. But she was exactly what every one desired that she should be at the moment. No one could precisely define why they left her presence in a complacent mood and in a friendly attitude towards the whole human race. Such being the case, however, her society was naturally sought for, and reluctantly abandoned. As the countess sat this afternoon, listlessly and idly before her aquarelles, quite disinclined for work, and leaning her little head with its great coils of black braids wearily on her hands, her eyes rested mechanically on a miniature likeness near her. The miniature was that of a young man, well-featured, well dressed, well _frisé_, and well-painted. Under the sober tint of the beard and hair was the suggestion of a more fiery hue,--the red of the ancient Gaul,--just as in the mild brown eyes lurked the possibility of a flash of "_furia Francese_," the savage ferocity which centuries of civilization and good manners have only smothered in the modern Frenchman, and which shows itself any day in the blouses, as it might in the time of Charlemagne, in spite of their surroundings of millinery, cookery, hair-dressing, and the art of dancing. These reflections, however, were not in the least the source of Mathilde's preoccupation. After a prolonged contemplation of the young gentleman's miniature, she exclaimed petulantly, "Why should my aunt and uncle urge me to marry again, especially Armand?" always regarding the brown eyes of the miniature. "He looks mild enough there on ivory. But I can imagine him clothed with the authority of a husband, making scenes of jealousy, interfering, dictating, and being quite insupportable. I like him too well to expose him to such temptations. We are much better as we are. There is De Villefort. He is more solid, and more simple in character, but terribly in earnest, I should say. And they say he will never marry. Some disappointment in the past, or some hope for the future will keep him as he is,--so they say, at least;" and she fell into another revery, which was finally interrupted by a servant announcing the Colonel de Villefort.
