d the old man, she heard a cry
like the noise made by a rattle. That shrill voice, if indeed it were
a voice, escaped from a throat almost entirely dry. It was at once
succeeded by a convulsive little cough like a child's, of a peculiar
resonance. At that sound, Marianina, Filippo, and Madame de Lanty looked
toward us, and their glances were like lightning flashes. The young
woman wished that she were at the bottom of the Seine. She took my arm
and pulled me away toward a boudoir. Everybody, men and women, made
room for us to pass. Having reached the further end of the suite of
reception-rooms, we entered a small semi-circular cabinet. My companion
threw herself on a divan, breathing fast with terror, not knowing where
she was.

"You are mad, madame," I said to her.

"But," she rejoined, after a moment's silence, during which I gazed
at her in admiration, "is it my fault? Why does Madame de Lanty allow
ghosts to wander round her house?"

"Nonsense," I replied; "you are doing just what fools do. You mistake a
little old man for a spectre."

"Hush," she retorted, with the imposing, yet mocking, air which all
women are so well able to assume when they are determined to put
themselves in the right. "Oh! what a sweet boudoir!" she cried, looking
about her. "Blue satin hangings always produce an admirable effect. How
cool it is! Ah! the lovely picture!" she added, rising and standing in
front of a magnificently framed painting.

We stood for a moment gazing at that marvel of art, which seemed
the work of some supernatural brush. The picture represented Adonis
stretched out on a lion's skin. The lamp, in an alabaster vase, hanging
in the centre of the boudoir, cast upon the canvas a soft light which
enabled us to grasp all the beauties of the picture.

"Does such a perfect creature exist?" she asked me, after examining
attentively, and not without a sweet smile of satisfaction, the
exquisite grace of the outlines, the attitude, the color, the hair, in
fact everything.

"He is too beautiful for a man," she added, after such a scrutiny as she
would have bestowed upon a rival.

Ah! how sharply I felt at that moment those pangs of jealousy in which
a poet had tried in vain to make me believe! the jealousy of engravings,
of pictures, of statues, wherein artists exaggerate human beauty, as a
result of the doctrine which leads them to idealize everything.

"It is a portrait," I replied. "It is a product of Vien's genius. B