which
tear as she goes through, and lighting so gracefully on the galloping
horse to such applause,--no hired clapping,--well, all that moves me."

"More than a handsome woman in a ballroom?" asked Clementine, with
amazement and curiosity.

"Yes," answered Paz, in a choking voice. "Such agility, such grace under
constant danger seems to me the height of triumph for a woman. Yes,
madame, Cinti and Malibran, Grisi and Taglioni, Pasta and Ellsler, all
who reign or have reigned on the stage, can't be compared, to my mind,
with Malaga, who can jump on or off a horse at full gallop, or stand
on the point of one foot and fall easily into the saddle, and knit
stockings, break eggs, and make an omelette with the horse at full
speed, to the admiration of the people,--the real people, peasants and
soldiers. Malaga, madame, is dexterity personified; her little wrist or
her little foot can rid her of three or four men. She is the goddess of
gymnastics."

"She must be stupid--"

"Oh, no," said Paz, "I find her as amusing as the heroine of 'Peveril
of the Peak.' Thoughtless as a Bohemian, she says everything that comes
into her head; she thinks no more about the future than you do of
the sous you fling to the poor. She says grand things sometimes. You
couldn't make her believe that an old diplomatist was a handsome young
man, not if you offered her a million of francs. Such love as hers is
perpetual flattery to a man. Her health is positively insolent, and she
has thirty-two oriental pearls in lips of coral. Her muzzle--that's what
she calls the lower part of her face--has, as Shakespeare expresses
it, the savor of a heifer's nose. She can make a man unhappy. She likes
handsome men, strong men, Alexanders, gymnasts, clowns. Her trainer, a
horrible brute, used to beat her to make her supple, and graceful, and
intrepid--"

"You are positively intoxicated with Malaga."

"Oh, she is called Malaga only on the posters," said Paz, with a piqued
air. "She lives in the rue Saint-Lazare, in a pretty apartment on the
third story, all velvet and silk, like a princess. She has two lives,
her circus life and the life of a pretty woman."

"Does she love you?"

"She loves me--now you will laugh--solely because I'm a Pole. She saw
an engraving of Poles rushing with Poniatowski into the Elster,--for all
France persists in thinking that the Elster, where it is impossible
to get drowned, is an impetuous flood, in which Poniatowski and his
fol