“Darling, you do not know Phanion.  Oh, I am sure that Monsieur Dechartre knows her.  She was beautiful, and dear to poets.  She lived in the Island of Cos, beside a dell which, covered with lemon-trees, descended to the blue sea.  And they say that she looked at the blue waves.  I related Phanion’s history to Monsieur Le Menil, and he was very glad to hear it.  She had received from some hunter a little hare with long ears.  She held it on her knees and fed it on spring flowers.  It loved Phanion and forgot its mother.  It died before having eaten too many flowers.  Phanion lamented over its loss.  She buried it in the lemon-grove, in a grave which she could see from her bed.  And the shade of the little hare was consoled by the songs of the poets.”

The good Madame Marmet said that M. Le Menil pleased by his elegant and discreet manners, which young men no longer practise.  She would have liked to see him.  She wanted him to do something for her.

“Or, rather, for my nephew,” she said.  “He is a captain in the artillery, and his chiefs like him.  His colonel was for a long time under orders of Monsieur Le Menil’s uncle, General La Briche.  If Monsieur Le Menil would ask his uncle to write to Colonel Faure in favor of my nephew I should be grateful to him.  My nephew is not a stranger to Monsieur Le Menil.  They met last year at the masked ball which Captain de Lassay gave at the hotel at Caen.”

Madame Marmet cast down her eyes and added: 

“The invited guests, naturally, were not society women.  But it is said some of them were very pretty.  They came from Paris.  My nephew, who gave these details to me, was dressed as a coachman.  Monsieur Le Menil was dressed as a Hussar of Death, and he had much success.”

Miss Bell said that she was sorry not to have known that M. Le Menil was in Florence.  Certainly, she should have invited him to come to Fiesole.

Dechartre remained sombre and distant during the rest of the dinner:  and when, at the moment of leaving, Therese extended her hand to him, she felt that he avoided pressing it in his.

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