The Cross of Berny eBook

Émile de Girardin
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 347 pages of information about The Cross of Berny.

The Cross of Berny eBook

Émile de Girardin
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 347 pages of information about The Cross of Berny.
have to exercise a great deal of ingenuity to find out if we have ever met.  Before appearing before them, I inquire if they are fashionable people, spent last winter in Paris, &c.?  I am told Don Quixote is almost a savage; he travels all the time so as to sustain his character as knight-errant, and that he spent last winter in Rome....  This quieted my fears ...  I did not appear in society until last winter, so Don Quixote never saw me; knowing we could meet without the possibility of recognition, I dismissed him from my mind.

Yesterday, at three o’clock, Madame de Meilhan and her son went to the depot to meet their guests.  I was standing at the front door when they drove off, and Madame de Meilhan called out to me:  “My dear Madame Guerin, I recommend my bouquets to you; pray spare me the eternal soucis with which the cruel Etienne insists upon filling my rooms; now I rely upon you for relief.”

I smiled at this pun as if I had never heard it before, and promised to superintend the arrangement of the flowers.  I went into the garden and found Etienne gathering soucis, more soucis, nothing but soucis.  I glanced at his flower-beds, and at once understood the cause of his predilection for this dreadful flower; it was the only kind that deigned to bloom in his melancholy garden:  This is the secret of many inexplicable preferences.

I thought with horror that Madame de Meilhan would continue to be a prey to soucis if I did not come to her rescue, so I said:  “Etienne, what a pity to cull them all! they are so effective in a garden; let us go look for some other flowers—­it is a shame to ruin your beautiful beds!” The flattered Stephen eagerly followed me to a corner of the garden where I had admired some superb catalpas.  He gathered branches of them, with which I filled the Japanese vases on the mantel, and ornamented the corners of the parlor, thus converting it into a flowery grove.  I also arranged some Bengal roses and dahlias that had escaped Etienne’s culture, and with the addition of some asters and a very few soucis I must confess, I was charmed with the result of my labors.  But I wanted some delicate flowers for the pretty vase on the centre table, and remembering that an old florist, a friend of Madame Taverneau and one of my professed admirers, lived about a mile from the chateau, I determined to walk over and describe to him the dreadful condition of Madame de Meilhan, and appeal to him for assistance.  Fortunately I found him in his green-house, and delighted him by repeating the pun about filling the house with soucis.  Provincials have a singular taste for puns; I never make them, and only repeat them because I love to please.  The old man was fascinated, and rewarded my flattery by making me up a magnificent bouquet of rare, unknown, nameless, exquisite flowers that could be found nowhere else; my bouquet was worth a fortune, and what fortune ever exhaled such perfume?  I started off triumphant.  I tell you all this to show how calm and little inclined I was to romance on that morning.

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Project Gutenberg
The Cross of Berny from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.