Within my mind I envisaged the possibility of touching M. Rochez for a further two hundred francs if and when opportunity arose.

2.

The formal introduction took place on the boulevards one fine afternoon shortly after that.  Mlle. Leah was walking under the trees with her duenna when we—­M.  Rochez and I—­came face to face with them.  My friend raised his hat, and I did likewise.  Mademoiselle Leah blushed and the ogre frowned.  Sir, she was an ogre!—­bony and angular and hook-nosed, with thin lips that closed with a snap, and cold grey eyes that sent a shiver down your spine!  Rochez introduced me to her, and I made myself exceedingly agreeable to her, while my friend succeeded in exchanging two or three whispered words with his inamorata.

But we did not get very far that day.  Mlle. Goldberg senior soon marched her lovely charge away.

Ah, Sir, she was lovely indeed!  And in my heart I not only envied Rochez his good fortune but I also felt how entirely unworthy he was of it.  Nor did the beautiful Leah give me the impression of being quite so deeply struck with his charms as he would have had me believe.  Indeed, it struck me during those few minutes that I stood dutifully talking to her duenna that the fair young Jewess cast more than one approving glance in my direction.

Be that as it may, the progress of our respective courtships, now that the ice was broken, took on a more decided turn.  At first it only amounted to meetings on the boulevards and a cursory greeting, but soon Mlle. Goldberg senior, delighted with my conversation, would deliberately turn to walk with me under the trees the while Fernand Rochez followed by the side of his adored.  A week later the ladies accepted my friend’s offer to sit under the awning of the Cafe Bourbon and to sip sirops, whilst we indulged in tankards of foaming “blondes.”

Within a fortnight, Sir—­I may say it without boasting—­I had Mlle. Goldberg senior in the hollow of my hand.  On the boulevards, as soon as she caught sight of me, her dour face would be wreathed in smiles, a row of large yellow teeth would appear between her thin lips, and her cold, grey eyes would soften with a glance of welcome which more than ever sent a cold shudder down my spine.  While we four were together, either promenading or sitting at open-air cafes in the cool of the evening, the old duenna had eyes and ears only for me, and if my friend Rochez did not get on with his own courtship as fast as he would have wished the fault rested entirely with him.

For he did not get on with his courtship, and that was a fact.  The fair Leah was very sweet, very coy, greatly amused, I fancy, at her aunt’s obvious infatuation for me, and not a little flattered at the handsome M. Rochez’s attentions to herself.  But there it all ended.  And whenever I questioned Rochez on the subject, he flew into a temper and consigned all middle-aged Jewesses to perdition, and all the lovely and young ones to a comfortable kind of Hades to which he alone amongst the male sex would have access.  From which I gathered that I was not wrong in my surmises, that the fair Leah had been smitten by my personality and my appearance rather than by those of my friend, and that he was suffering the pangs of an insane jealousy.