so full
that he could not bring himself to go forward and say he was the
painter. And at this juncture Albertine happened to drop one of her
gloves, which she had taken off. Edmund stooped to pick it up, and as
Albertine did the same thing at the same instant, their heads banged
together with such a crash that it rang through the place.

"Oh, good gracious!" Albertine cried, holding her hands to her head.

Edmund started back in consternation and alarm. At his first step he
stamped on the old lady's pug, which yelled aloud; at his second he
trampled the gouty toe of a professor, who gave a tremendous shout, and
devoted poor Edmund to all the infernal deities. Then the people came
hurrying from the neighbouring rooms, and all the lorgnettes were fixed
upon Edmund, who made the best of his way out of the place, amid the
whimperings of the dog, the curses of the professor, the objurgations
of the old lady, and the tittering and laughter of the girls. He made,
we say, his escape in those circumstances, blushing over and over with
shame and discomfiture, in complete despair, whilst a number of young
ladies got out their essence-bottles and rubbed Albertine's forehead,
on which a great lump was rapidly rising.

Even then, in the crisis of this ridiculous occurrence, Edmund had
fallen deeply in love, though he was scarcely aware of it himself. And
it was only a painful sense of his own stupidity that prevented him
from going to search for her all over the town. He could not think of
her otherwise than with a great red lump on her forehead, and the
bitterest reproach, the most distinct expression of anger, in her face
and in her whole being.

There was not the faintest trace of this, however, about her as he saw
her now. She blushed indeed over and over again when she saw him, and
seemed unable to control herself. But when her father asked him his
name, &c., she said with a delightful smile, and in gentle accents,
"that she must be much mistaken if he were not Mr. Lehsen, the
celebrated painter, whose works she so immensely admired."

Those words, we need not say, ran through Edmund's nerves like an
electric shock. In his emotion he was about to burst into flowers of
rhetoric, but the Commissionsrath would not let him get to that,
clasping him to his breast with fervour, and saying, "My dear sir, what
about the cigar you promised me?" And whilst he was lighting said cigar
at the ashes of the former one, he said, "So you a