her neck and arms. "Is that Isidore?" I asked, in a somewhat fierce whisper.
She pushed up her lip, smiled, and nodded.
"Is that Isidore?" I repeated, giving her a shake: I could have given her a dozen.
"C'est lui-même", said she. "How coarse he is, compared with the Colonel-Count! And then—oh, ciel!—the whiskers!"
Dr. John now passed on.
"The Colonel-Count!" I echoed. "The doll—the puppet—the manikin—the poor inferior creature! Is it possible that fine generous gentleman—handsome as a vision—offers you his honorable hand and gallant heart, and promises to protect your flimsy person and worthless mind through the storms and struggles of life—and you hang back—you scorn, you sting, you torture him! Have you power to do this? Who gave you that power? Where is it? Does it lie all in your beauty—your pink and white complexion, and your yellow hair? Does this bind his soul at your feet, and bend his neck under your yoke? Does this purchase for you his affection, his tenderness, his thoughts, his hopes, his interest, his noble, cordial love—and will you not have it? Do you scorn it? You are only dissembling: you are not in earnest; you love him; you long for him; but you trifle with his heart to make him more surely yours?"
"Bah! How you run on! I don't understand half you have said".
I had got her out into the garden ere this. I now set her down on a seat and told her she should not stir till she had avowed which she meant in the end to accept—the man or the monkey.
"Him you call the man," said she, "is bourgeois, sandy-haired, and answers to the name of John!—cela suffit: je n'en veux pas. Colonel de Hamal is a gentleman of excellent connections, perfect manners, sweet appearance, with pale interesting face, and hair and eyes like an Italian. Then too he is the most delightful company possible—a man quite in my way; not sensible and serious like the other, but one with whom I can talk on equal terms—who does not plague, and bore, and harass me with depths, and heights, and passions, and talents for which I have no taste. There now. Don't hold me so fast".
