“For, after all,” said he to himself, “if she really wished to avoid me and put me off her track, it is because she loves me.  With women of that stamp, coyness is a proof of love.  Well, if I had carried the adventure any further, it would, perhaps, have ended in disgust.  I will sleep in peace.”

The Count was in the habit of analyzing his keenest sensations, as men do involuntarily when they have as much brains as heart, and he was surprised when he saw the strange damsel of the Rue Froid-Manteau once more, not in the pictured splendor of his dream but in the bare reality of dreary fact.  And, in spite of it all, if fancy had stripped the woman of her livery of misery, it would have spoilt her for him; for he wanted her, he longed for her, he loved her—­with her muddy stockings, her slipshod feet, her straw bonnet!  He wanted her in the very house where he had seen her go in.

“Am I bewitched by vice, then?” he asked himself in dismay.  “Nay, I have not yet reached that point.  I am but three-and-twenty, and there is nothing of the senile fop about me.”

The very vehemence of the whim that held possession of him to some extent reassured him.  This strange struggle, these reflections, and this love in pursuit may perhaps puzzle some persons who are accustomed to the ways of Paris life; but they may be reminded that Count Andrea Marcosini was not a Frenchman.

Brought up by two abbes, who, in obedience to a very pious father, had rarely let him out of their sight, Andrea had not fallen in love with a cousin at the age of eleven, or seduced his mother’s maid by the time he was twelve; he had not studied at school, where a lad does not learn only, or best, the subjects prescribed by the State; he had lived in Paris but a few years, and he was still open to those sudden but deep impressions against which French education and manners are so strong a protection.  In southern lands a great passion is often born of a glance.  A gentleman of Gascony who had tempered strong feelings by much reflection had fortified himself by many little recipes against sudden apoplexies of taste and heart, and he advised the Count to indulge at least once a month in a wild orgy to avert those storms of the soul which, but for such precautions, are apt to break out at inappropriate moments.  Andrea now remembered this advice.

“Well,” thought he, “I will begin to-morrow, January 1st.”

This explains why Count Andrea Marcosini hovered so shyly before turning down the Rue Froid-Manteau.  The man of fashion hampered the lover, and he hesitated for some time; but after a final appeal to his courage he went on with a firm step as far as the house, which he recognized without difficulty.

There he stopped once more.  Was the woman really what he fancied her?  Was he not on the verge of some false move?

At this juncture he remembered the Italian table d’hote, and at once jumped at the middle course, which would serve the ends alike of his curiosity and of his reputation.  He went in to dine, and made his way down the passage; at the bottom, after feeling about for some time, he found a staircase with damp, slippery steps, such as to an Italian nobleman could only seem a ladder.