This information gave me much food for reflection. I cannot describe
to you the suspense in which I passed the time till my next lesson,
which took place this morning.
During the first quarter of an hour I examined him closely, debating
inwardly whether he were duke or commoner, without being able to come
to any conclusion. He seemed to read my fancies as they arose and to
take pleasure in thwarting them. At last I could endure it no longer.
Putting down my book suddenly, I broke off the translation I was
making of it aloud, and said to him in Spanish:
"You are deceiving us. You are no poor middle-class Liberal. You are
the Duke de Soria!" "Mademoiselle," he replied, with a gesture of sorrow, "unhappily, I am
not the Duc de Soria." I felt all the despair with which he uttered the word "unhappily." Ah!
my dear, never should I have conceived it possible to throw so much
meaning and passion into a single word. His eyes had dropped, and he
dared no longer look at me.
"M. de Talleyrand," I said, "in whose house you spent your years of
exile, declares that any one bearing the name of Henarez must either
be the late Duc de Soria or a lacquey."
He looked at me with eyes like two black burning coals, at once
blazing and ashamed. The man might have been in the torture-chamber.
All he said was: "My father was in truth the servant of the King of Spain."
Griffith could make nothing of this sort of lesson. An awkward silence
followed each question and answer. "In one word," I said, "are you a nobleman or not?"
"You know that in Spain even beggars are noble."
This reticence provoked me. Since the last lesson I had given play to
my imagination in a little practical joke. I had drawn an ideal
portrait of the man whom I should wish for my lover in a letter which
I designed giving to him to translate. So far, I had only put Spanish
into French, not French into Spanish; I pointed this out to him, and
begged Griffith to bring me the last letter I had received from a
friend of mine. "I shall find out," I thought, from the effect my sketch has on him,
"what sort of blood runs in his veins."
I took the paper from Griffith's hands, saying: "Let me see if I have copied it rightly."