Her whole face was refined and discreet, a face the expression of which seemed to have gone out without being used up or faded by the fatigues and great emotions of life.

What a dainty mouth! and such pretty teeth!  But one would have thought that she did not dare smile.

Suddenly I compared her to Madame Chantal!  Undoubtedly Mademoiselle Pearl was the better of the two, a hundred times better, daintier, prouder, more noble.  I was surprised at my observation.  They were pouring out champagne.  I held my glass up to the queen and, with a well-turned compliment, I drank to her health.  I could see that she felt inclined to hide her head in her napkin.  Then, as she was dipping her lips in the clear wine, everybody cried:  “The queen drinks! the queen drinks!” She almost turned purple and choked.  Everybody was laughing; but I could see that all loved her.

As soon as dinner was over Chantal took me by the arm.  It was time for his cigar, a sacred hour.  When alone he would smoke it out in the street; when guests came to dinner he would take them to the billiard room and smoke while playing.  That evening they had built a fire to celebrate Twelfth Night; my old friend took his cue, a very fine one, and chalked it with great care; then he said: 

“You break, my boy!”

He called me “my boy,” although I was twenty-five, but he had known me as a young child.

I started the game and made a few carroms.  I missed some others, but as the thought of Mademoiselle Pearl kept returning to my mind, I suddenly asked: 

“By the way, Monsieur Chantal, is Mademoiselle Pearl a relative of yours?”

Greatly surprised, he stopped playing and looked at me: 

“What!  Don’t you know?  Haven’t you heard about Mademoiselle Pearl?”

“No.”

“Didn’t your father ever tell you?”

“No.”

“Well, well, that’s funny!  That certainly is funny!  Why, it’s a regular romance!”

He paused, and then continued: 

“And if you only knew how peculiar it is that you should ask me that to-day, on Twelfth Night!”

“Why?”

“Why?  Well, listen.  Forty-one years ago to day, the day of the Epiphany, the following events occurred:  We were then living at Roily-le-Tors, on the ramparts; but in order that you may understand, I must first explain the house.  Roily is built on a hill, or, rather, on a mound which overlooks a great stretch of prairie.  We had a house there with a beautiful hanging garden supported by the old battlemented wall; so that the house was in the town on the streets, while the garden overlooked the plain.  There was a door leading from the garden to the open country, at the bottom of a secret stairway in the thick wall—­the kind you read about in novels.  A road passed in front of this door, which was provided with a big bell; for the peasants, in order to avoid the roundabout way, would bring their provisions up this way.