Chapter 2

Chapter II:
A Lover and His Mistress.

Whilst the wax-lights were burning in the castle of Blois, around the
inanimate body of Gaston of Orleans, that last representative of the
past; whilst the _bourgeois_ of the city were thinking out his epitaph,
which was far from being a panegyric; whilst madame the dowager, no
longer remembering that in her young days she had loved that senseless
corpse to such a degree as to fly the paternal palace for his sake, was
making, within twenty paces of the funeral apartment, her little
calculations of interest and her little sacrifices of pride; other
interests and other prides were in agitation in all the parts of the
castle into which a living soul could penetrate. Neither the lugubrious
sounds of the bells, nor the voices of the chanters, nor the splendor of
the wax-lights through the windows, nor the preparations for the funeral,
had power to divert the attention of two persons, placed at a window of
the interior court - a window that we are acquainted with, and which
lighted a chamber forming part of what were called the little
apartments. For the rest, a joyous beam of the sun, for the sun appeared
to care little for the loss France had just suffered; a sunbeam, we say,
descended upon them, drawing perfumes from the neighboring flowers, and
animating the walls themselves. These two persons, so occupied, not by
the death of the duke, but by the conversation which was the consequence
of that death, were a young woman and a young man. The latter personage,
a man of from twenty-five to twenty-six years of age, with a mien
sometimes lively and sometimes dull, making good use of two large eyes,
shaded with long eye-lashes, was short of stature and swart of skin; he
smiled with an enormous, but well-furnished mouth, and his pointed chin,
which appeared to enjoy a mobility nature does not ordinarily grant to
that portion of the countenance, leant from time to time very lovingly
towards his interlocutrix, who, we must say, did not always draw back so
rapidly as strict propriety had a right to require. The young girl - we
know her, for we have already seen her, at that very same window, by the
light of that same sun - the young girl presented a singular mixture of
shyness and reflection; she was charming when she laughed, beautiful when
she became serious; but, let us hasten to say, she was more frequently
charming than beautiful. These two appeared to have attained the
culminating point of a discussion - half-bantering, half-serious.

"Now, Monsieur Malicorne," said the young girl, "does it, at length,
please you that we should talk reasonably?"

"You believe that that is very easy, Mademoiselle Aure," replied the
young man. "To do what we like, when we can only do