One afternoon of the autumn of 1876, toward dusk, a young man of pleasing appearance rang at the door of a small apartment on the third floor of an old Roman house.On its being opened he enquired for Madame Merle; whereupon the servant, a neat, plain woman, with a French face and a lady's maid's manner, ushered him into a diminutive drawing-room and requested the favour of his name."Mr.
Edward Rosier," said the young man, who sat down to wait till his hostess should appear.
The reader will perhaps not have forgotten that Mr.Rosier was an ornament of the American circle in Paris, but it may also be remembered that he sometimes vanished from its horizon.He had spent a portion of several winters at Pau, and as he was a gentleman of constituted habits he might have continued for years to pay his annual visit to this charming resort.In the summer of 1876, however, an incident befell him which changed the current not only of his thoughts, but of his customary sequences.He passed a month in the Upper Engadine and encountered at Saint Moritz a charming young girl.To this little person he began to pay, on the spot, particular attention: she struck him as exactly the household angel he had long been looking for.He was never precipitate, he was nothing if not discreet, so he forbore for the present to declare his passion; but it seemed to him when they parted-the young lady to go down into Italy and her admirer to proceed to Geneva, where he was under bonds to join other friends that he should be romantically wretched if he were not to see her again.The simplest way to do so was to go in the autumn to Rome, where Miss Osmond was domiciled with her family.Mr.Rosier started on his pilgrimage to the Italian capital and reached it on the first of November.It was a pleasant thing to do, but for the young man there was a strain of the heroic in the enterprise.He might expose himself, unseasoned, to the poison of the Roman air, which in November lay, notoriously, much in wait.Fortune, however, favours the brave; and this adventurer, who took three grains of quinine a day, had at the end of a month no cause to deplore his temerity.He had made to a certain extent good use of his time; he had devoted it in vain to finding a flaw in Pansy Osmond's composition.She was admirably finished; she had had the last touch; she was really a consummate piece.He thought of her in amorous meditation a good deal as he might have thought of a Dresden-china shepherdess.Miss Osmond, indeed, in the bloom of her juvenility, had a hint of the rococo which Rosier, whose taste was predominantly for that manner, could not fail to appreciate.That he esteemed the productions of comparatively frivolous periods would have been apparent from the attention he bestowed upon Madame Merle's drawing-room, which, although furnished with specimens of every style, was especially rich in articles of the last two centuries.He had immediately put a glass into one eye and looked round; and then "By Jove, she has some jolly good things!" he had yearningly murmured.The room was small and densely filled with furniture; it gave an impression of faded silk and little statuettes which might totter if one moved.Rosier got up and wandered about with his careful tread, bending over the tables charged with knick-knacks and the cushions embossed with princely arms.When Madame Merle came in she found him standing before the fireplace with his nose very close to the great lace flounce attached to the damask cover of the mantel.He had lifted it delicately, as if he were smelling it.
"It's old Venetian," she said; "it's rather good.""It's too good for this; you ought to wear it.""They tell me you have some better in Paris, in the same situation.""Ah, but I can't wear mine," smiled the visitor.
"I don't see why you shouldn't! I've better lace than that to wear."His eyes wandered, lingeringly, round the room again."You've some very good things.""Yes, but I hate them."
"Do you want to get rid of them?" the young man quickly asked.
"No, it's good to have something to hate: one works it off!""I love my things," said Mr.Rosier as he sat there flushed with all his recognitions."But it's not about them, nor about yours, that Icame to talk to you."
He paused a moment and then, with greater softness: "I care more for Miss Osmond than for all the bibelots in Europe!"Madame Merle opened wide eyes."Did you come to tell me that?""I came to ask your advice."
She looked at him with a friendly frown, stroking her chin with her large white hand."A man in love, you know, doesn't ask advice.""Why not, if he's in a difficult position? That's often the case with a man in love.I've been in love before, and I know.But never so much as this time-really never so much.I should like particularly to know what you think of my prospects.I'm afraid that for Mr.Osmond I'm not-well, a real collector's piece.""Do you wish me to intercede?" Madame Merle asked with her fine arms folded and her handsome mouth drawn up to the left.
"If you could say a good word for me I should be greatly obliged.
There will be no use in my troubling Miss Osmond unless I have good reason to believe her father will consent.""You're very considerate; that's in your favour.But you assume in rather an off-hand way that I think you a prize.""You've been very kind to me," said the young man."That's why Icame."
"I'm always kind to people who have good Louis Quatorze.It's very rare now, and there's no telling what one may get by it." With which the left-hand corner of Madame Merle's mouth gave expression to the joke.
But he looked, in spite of it, literally apprehensive and consistently strenuous."Ah, I thought you liked me for myself!""I like you very much; but, if you please, we won't analyze.