ure. It is true that they
generally marry old, ugly, and corrupted men, and make up for it
by taking two or three lovers six months after. But Adrienne felt
instinctively how much of virginal and celestial freshness there is in
the equal innocence of two loving and passionate beings--what guarantees
for the future in the remembrance which a man preserves of his first
love!

We say, then, that Adrienne was only half-satisfied, though convinced by
the vexation of Rose-Pompon that Djalma had never entertained a serious
attachment for the grisette.

"And why do you detest me, miss?" said Adrienne mildly, when Rose-Pompon
had finished her speech.

"Oh! bless me, madame!" replied the latter, forgetting altogether her
assumption of triumph, and yielding to the natural sincerity of her
character; "pretend that you don't know why I detest you!--Oh, yes!
people go and pick bouquets from the jaws of a panther for people that
they care nothing about, don't they? And if it was only that!" added
Rose-Pompon, who was gradually getting animated, and whose pretty face,
at first contracted into a sullen pout, now assumed an expression of
real and yet half-comic sorrow.

"And if it was only the nosegay!" resumed she. "Though it gave me a
dreadful turn to see Prince Charming leap like a kid upon the stage, I
might have said to myself: 'Pooh! these Indians have their own way of
showing politeness. Here, a lady drops her nosegay, and a gentleman
picks it up and gives it to her; but in India it is quite another thing;
the man picks up the nosegay, and does not return it to the woman--he
only kills a panther before her eyes.' Those are good manners in that
country, I suppose; but what cannot be good manners anywhere is to treat
a woman as I have been treated. And all thanks to you, madame!"

These complaints of Rose-Pompon, at once bitter and laughable, did
not at all agree with what she had previously stated as to Djalma's
passionate love for her; but Adrienne took care not to point out this
contradiction, and said to her, mildly: "You must be mistaken, miss,
when you suppose that I had anything to do with your troubles. But, in
any case, I regret sincerely that you should have been ill-treated by
any one."

"If you think I have been beaten, you are quite wrong," exclaimed Rose
Pompon. "Ah! well, I am sure! No, it is not that. But I am certain that,
had it not been for you, Prince Charming would have got to love me
a little. I am wort