"But think of yourself," she went on; "several
young men, who want to drive you away from the baths, have agreed to
pick a quarrel with you, and to force you into a duel."
The elderly lady's voice sounded in the distance.
"Mademoiselle," began the Marquis, "my gratitude----" But his
protectress had fled already; she had heard the voice of her mistress
squeaking afresh among the rocks.
"Poor girl! unhappiness always understands and helps the unhappy,"
Raphael thought, and sat himself down at the foot of a tree.
The key of every science is, beyond cavil, the mark of interrogation;
we owe most of our greatest discoveries to a _Why_? and all the wisdom
in the world, perhaps, consists in asking _Wherefore_? in every
connection. But, on the other hand, this acquired prescience is the
ruin of our illusions.
So Valentin, having taken the old maid's kindly action for the text of
his wandering thoughts, without the deliberate promptings of
philosophy, must find it full of gall and wormwood.
"It is not at all extraordinary that a gentlewoman's gentlewoman
should take a fancy to me," said he to himself. "I am twenty-seven
years old, and I have a title and an income of two hundred thousand a
year. But that her mistress, who hates water like a rabid cat--for it
would be hard to give the palm to either in that matter--that her
mistress should have brought her here in a boat! Is not that very
strange and wonderful? Those two women came into Savoy to sleep like
marmots; they ask if day has dawned at noon; and to think that they
could get up this morning before eight o'clock, to take their chances
in running after me!"
Very soon the old maid and her elderly innocence became, in his eyes,
a fresh manifestation of that artificial, malicious little world.
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