We sat down as usual and finished our dinner without anything out of the ordinary being said.  At dessert the Twelfth Night cake was brought on.  Now, M. Chantal had been king every year.  I don’t know whether this was the result of continued chance or a family convention, but he unfailingly found the bean in his piece of cake, and he would proclaim Madame Chantal to be queen.  Therefore, I was greatly surprised to find something very hard, which almost made me break a tooth, in a mouthful of cake.  Gently I took this thing from my mouth and I saw that it was a little porcelain doll, no bigger than a bean.  Surprise caused me to exclaim: 

“Ah!” All looked at me, and Chantal clapped his hands and cried:  “It’s Gaston!  It’s Gaston!  Long live the king!  Long live the king!”

All took up the chorus:  “Long live the king!” And I blushed to the tip of my ears, as one often does, without any reason at all, in situations which are a little foolish.  I sat there looking at my plate, with this absurd little bit of pottery in my fingers, forcing myself to laugh and not knowing what to do or say, when Chantal once more cried out:  “Now, you must choose a queen!”

Then I was thunderstruck.  In a second a thousand thoughts and suppositions flashed through my mind.  Did they expect me to pick out one of the young Chantal ladies?  Was that a trick to make me say which one I prefer?  Was it a gentle, light, direct hint of the parents toward a possible marriage?  The idea of marriage roams continually in houses with grown-up girls, and takes every shape and disguise, and employs every subterfuge.  A dread of compromising myself took hold of me as well as an extreme timidity before the obstinately correct and reserved attitude of the Misses Louise and Pauline.  To choose one of them in preference to the other seemed to me as difficult as choosing between two drops of water; and then the fear of launching myself into an affair which might, in spite of me, lead me gently into matrimonial ties, by means as wary and imperceptible and as calm as this insignificant royalty—­the fear of all this haunted me.

Suddenly I had an inspiration, and I held out to Mademoiselle Pearl the symbolical emblem.  At first every one was surprised, then they doubtless appreciated my delicacy and discretion, for they applauded furiously.  Everybody was crying:  “Long live the queen!  Long live the queen!”

As for herself, poor old maid, she was so amazed that she completely lost control of herself; she was trembling and stammering:  “No—­no—­oh! no—­not me—­please—­not me—­I beg of you——­”

Then for the first time in my life I looked at Mademoiselle Pearl and wondered what she was.

I was accustomed to seeing her in this house, just as one sees old upholstered armchairs on which one has been sitting since childhood without ever noticing them.  One day, with no reason at all, because a ray of sunshine happens to strike the seat, you suddenly think:  “Why, that chair is very curious”; and then you discover that the wood has been worked by a real artist and that the material is remarkable.  I had never taken any notice of Mademoiselle Pearl.