uliet might have seduced me into playing
the Romeo, if the rope-ladder to her balcony had been a particularly
breakneck one.

"Now, just before I came to Heligoland, various matters had united to
put me in a bad humor; and, besides, my nerves were unstrung by wrong
medical treatment, feverish work, and night-watching; and I troubled
myself little more about the society of the resort than I did about the
mussels and sea-weed on the beach.

"In an instant all this was changed. A stranger suddenly made her
appearance--a young woman--who soon became the puzzle and the talk of
the whole island. The stranger's list recorded her as Madame Jackson,
of Cherbourg. She was without an escort, had rented rooms in a fisher's
hut standing quite alone, and appeared to make it her chief aim to set
all male and female tongues in motion by the oddity of her behavior.

"She appeared on the beach very early in the morning in a toilet that
awakened the envy of all the ladies. It was not the costliness of the
materials or of the ornaments, but the singular grace with which she
knew how to wear and move in the plainest shawls and veils. Then,
besides, her face could not fail to attract the notice of everybody, if
only by its unusual contrasts. Her hair had a reddish-gold color, that
literally shone in the sun when she let it fall freely down her
shoulders; two delicate dark eyebrows curved over the softest blue
eyes, that looked out upon the world as if they hadn't the slightest
suspicion of the stir they were causing. A little black point-lace veil
hung down over her forehead--however, I needn't describe her to you.

"Of course, the women insisted that her golden hair was dyed, and her
eyebrows painted. Such a play of colors did not exist in Nature. But
the men did not find it the less charming on that account.

"An old Englishman was the first who ventured to address her, as a
countrywoman of his. She replied in the best of English, but so
shortly, that this unsuccessful attempt frightened away all others of
the same kind.

"However, she herself soon appeared to tire of the isolation which she
had maintained for the first few days. She made advances to a
Mecklenburg lady, who had accompanied her sick daughter to the
seashore, and, under the pretext of sympathy, she struck up an
acquaintance with her which she let drop again after a short time,
evidently because it bored her. As she also spoke German, though with
an English accent, sev