died five years ago, and now I am returning to Paris to get my daughter married,
for I have a daughter, a beautiful girl of eighteen, whom you have never seen. I
informed you of her birth, but you certainly did not pay much attention to so
trifling an event.
You are still the handsome Lormerin; so I have been told. Well, if you still
recollect little Lise, whom you used to call Lison, come and dine with her this
evening, with the elderly Baronne de Vance your ever faithful friend, who, with
some emotion, although happy, reaches out to you a devoted hand, which you
must c1asp, but no longer kiss, my poor Jaquelet.
LISE DE VANCE.
Lormerin's heart began to throb. He remained sunk in his armchair with the letter on his
knees, staring straight before him, overcome by a poignant emotion that made the tears
mount up to his eyes!
If he had ever loved a woman in his life it was this one, little Lise, Lise de Vance, whom he
called "Ashflower," on account of the strange color of her hair and the pale gray of her eyes.
Oh! what a dainty, pretty, charming creature she was, this frail baronne, the wife of that
gouty, pimply baron, who had abruptly carried her off to the provinces, shut her up, kept her
in seclusion through jealousy, jealousy of the handsome Lormerin.
Yes, he had loved her, and he believed that he too, had been truly loved. She familiarly
gave him, the name of Jaquelet, and would pronounce that word in a delicious fashion.
A thousand forgotten memories came back to him, far, off and sweet and melancholy now.
One evening she had called on him on her way home from a ball, and they went for a stroll
in the Bois de Boulogne, she in evening dress, he in his dressing-jacket. It was springtime;
the weather was beautiful. The fragrance from her bodice embalmed the warm air-the odor
of her bodice, and perhaps, too, the fragrance of her skin. What a divine night! When they
reached the lake, as the moon's rays fell across the branches into the water, she began to
weep. A little surprised, he asked her why.
"I don't know. The moon and the water have affected me. Every time I see poetic things I
have a tightening at the heart, and I have to cry."
He smiled, affected himself, considering her feminine emotion charming-- the unaffected
emotion of a poor little woman, whom every sensation overwhelms. And he embraced her
passionately, stammering:
"My little Lise, you are exquisite."
What a charming love affair, short-lived and dainty, it had been and over all too quickly, cut
short in the midst of its ardor by this old brute of a baron, who had carried off his wife, and
never let any one see her afterward.
Lormerin had forgotten, in fact, at the end of two or three months. One woman drives out
another so quickly in Paris, when one is a bachelor! No matter; he had kept a little altar for