French and Oriental Love in a Harem

They left the room, and I felt quite astonished at the way they greeted

each other. You can already understand the effect which my aunt must

have produced on me, and I was no less surprised at the new traits which

I discovered in my uncle's character. A complete revolution had been

effected. He became all at once very natty in his dress. His rough

straggling beard was trimmed in the Henri IVth style, and his moustaches

were twirled up at the ends. He left off swearing; his language and his

manners at once assumed the most correct tone, without constraint or

embarrassment, and with a modulation so natural, that it seemed really

to indicate a very long familiarity with fashionable practice. He had

not made a single slip. His frank gallantry had nothing artificial about

it; he was another man, and it was quite evident this was the only man

that Eudoxie de Cornalis had ever known him to be.

"Well! what do you think of your aunt?" he asked me as he came in after

five minutes' absence.

"She is charming, uncle, and as gracious as possible!"

"Did you expect to find her a monkey, then?" he exclaimed.

"Certainly not!" I replied. "But my aunt might have been beauty itself,

and still have lacked the character and the intellectual qualities which

I observe in her."

"Oh, you can't at all judge of her yet!" continued he, in a careless

tone. "You'll see what I mean later on. She's a real woman!"

My aunt did not come down again until luncheon-time. Her appearance

created quite an atmosphere of cheerful society in the dining-room,

usually occupied only by my uncle and his nephew. My uncle was no doubt

conscious of the same impression, for leaning towards me, he said to me

in his inimitably cool manner, and in a low voice, "Don't you see how everything brightens up already?"

My aunt sat down, and as she took off her gloves, cast her eyes over the

table, the sideboards, the servants in waiting, and the general

arrangements of the dining-room.

"François," she said to my uncle's old man-servant, "please send the

gardener to me at four o'clock."

"Yes, Madame la Comtesse."

"And then send the steward, whom I do not see here."

"Oh, I am the steward!" replied my uncle.

"That's capital! My compliments to you," she continued; "I might have

known it."

"All the same, I fancy I perform my duties very well: is not this new

furniture to your taste?"