The play wearied her, and she was in the constant habit of falling asleep there.  When her father, who worshipped her, proposed to make her some present of her own choice, she took an hour to decide, not being able to think of anything she cared for.  When M. Godeau gave a reception or a dinner, it often happened that Julie would not appear in the drawing-room, and at such times she passed the evening alone in her own room, in full dress, walking up and down, her fan in her hand.  If a compliment was addressed to her, she turned away her head, and if any one attempted to pay court to her, she responded only by a look at once so dazzling and so serious as to disconcert even the boldest.  Never had a sally made her laugh; never had an air in an opera, a flight of tragedy, moved her; indeed, never had her heart given a sign of life; and, on seeing her pass in all the splendor of her nonchalant loveliness one might have taken her for a beautiful somnambulist, walking through the world as in a trance.

So much indifference and coquetry did not seem easy to understand.  Some said she loved nothing, others that she loved nothing but herself.  A single word, however, suffices to explain her character,—­she was waiting.  From the age of fourteen she had heard it ceaselessly repeated that nothing was so charming as she.  She was convinced of this, and that was why she paid so much attention to dress.  In failing to do honor to her own person, she would have thought herself guilty of sacrilege.  She walked, in her beauty, so to speak, like a child in its holiday dress; but she was very far from thinking that her beauty was to remain useless.

Beneath her apparent unconcern she had a will, secret, inflexible, and the more potent the better it was concealed.  The coquetry of ordinary women, which spends itself in ogling, in simpering, and in smiling, seemed to her a childish, vain, almost contemptible way of fighting with shadows.  She felt herself in possession of a treasure, and she disdained to stake it piece by piece; she needed an adversary worthy of herself; but, too accustomed to see her wishes anticipated, she did not seek that adversary; it may even be said that she felt astonished at his failing to present himself.

For the four or five years that she had been out in society and had conscientiously displayed her flowers, her furbelows, and her beautiful shoulders, it seemed to her inconceivable that she had not yet inspired some great passion.

Had she said what was really behind her thoughts, she certainly would have replied to her many flatterers:  “Well! if it is true that I am so beautiful, why do you not blow your brains out for me?” An answer which many other young girls might make, and which more than one who says nothing hides away in a corner of her heart, not far perhaps from the tip of her tongue.