f seventeen, as handsome as a
Jewess can be when she keeps herself tidy and has not fair hair. She was
as white as snow, she had eyes like velvet, and dark lashes to them like
rats' tails; her hair was so thick and glossy that it made you long
to stroke it. She was perfection, and nothing less! I was the first to
discover this curious arrangement. I was walking up and down outside
one evening, smoking my pipe, after they thought I had gone to bed. The
children came in helter-skelter, tumbling over one another like so
many puppies. It was fun to watch them. Then they had supper with their
father and mother. I strained my eyes to see the young Jewess through
the clouds of smoke that her father blew from his pipe; she looked like
a new gold piece among a lot of copper coins.

"I had never reflected about love, my dear Benassis, I had never had
time; but now at the sight of this young girl I lost my heart and head
and everything else at once, and then it was plain to me that I had
never been in love before. I was hard hit, and over head and ears in
love. There I stayed smoking my pipe, absorbed in watching the Jewess
until she blew out the candle and went to bed. I could not close my
eyes. The whole night long I walked up and down the street smoking my
pipe and refilling it from time to time. I had never felt like that
before, and for the first and last time in my life I thought of
marrying.

"At daybreak I saddled my horse and rode out into the country, to
clear my head. I kept him at a trot for two mortal hours, and all but
foundered the animal before I noticed it----"

Genestas stopped short, looked at his new friend uneasily, and said,
"You must excuse me, Benassis, I am no orator; things come out just
as they turn up in my mind. In a room full of fine folk I should feel
awkward, but here in the country with you----"

"Go on," said the doctor.

"When I came back to my room I found Renard finely flustered. He thought
I had fallen in a duel. He was cleaning his pistols, his head full of
schemes for fastening a quarrel on any one who should have turned me
off into the dark.... Oh! that was just the fellow's way! I confided my
story to Renard, showed him the kennel where the children were; and, as
my comrade understood the jargon that those heathens talked, I begged
him to help me to lay my proposals before her father and mother, and to
try to arrange some kind of communication between me and Judith. Judith
they calle