nce in former days with
Guy. A Parisian Castilian, more Parisian than Spanish, he spoke with
exquisite finish the classic tongue, and with the free-and-easy manner
of a frequenter of the boulevards, chatted in the slang of the pavement
or of the greenroom; he was an eminent virtuoso and collector, an author
when the desire seized him, but only in his own interest, liberal in
his opinions, lavish in his disposition, attractive in his manners; an
eager traveller, he had, at thirty years of age, seen all that was to be
seen, he had visited India and Japan, drunk camel's milk under the tents
of the Kirgheez, and eaten dates with the Kabyles, and narrated with a
sort of appetizing irony, love adventures which might have seemed
romantic brag, if it were not that he lessened their improbability by
his raillery. He was a kind of belated Byron, who might have been cured
of his romantic tastes by the wounds and contact of reality.

She especially recalled a visit in Guy's company to Jose at an apartment
that the duke had furnished in Rue de Laval. He occupied a painter's
large studio, draping it with Oriental tapestry, crowding it with
knickknacks and panoplies of weapons: an extravagant luxury,--something
like the embarrassment of riches in a plundered caravansary. It was
there that Jose had regaled Marianne and Guy with coffee served in
Turkish fashion, and while they chatted, they had smoked that pale
Oriental tobacco, that the Spaniard, quoting some Persian poets,
gallantly compared to the perfumed locks of Mademoiselle Kayser.

During her years of hardship, she had many a time recalled that
auburn-haired, handsome fellow, with his blue eye, pensive and
searching, and lower lip curled disdainfully over his tawny beard
trimmed in Charles V. style, as he reclined there, stretched on Hindoo
rugs, chanting some monotonous song as slow as the movement of a
caravan.

"Isn't my friend Rosas a delightful fellow?" Guy had asked her.

"Delightful!"

"And clever! and learned! and entertaining! and, what is not amiss, a
multi-millionaire!"

Marianne thought of the absolute power, satisfied desires, whims and
possible dreams that were linked with that man. He was a mass of
perambulating gold. How many times she had dreamed, in the mists of her
recollection, of that somewhat haughty smile that curled his delicate
mustache, and those keen-edged teeth gleaming though his reddish beard,
as if greedy to bury themselves deep in flesh!