"Then you gathered these too ripe," said the hostess, who was only a fool externally.
"Ay, rotten ripe," observed another, inspecting them.
Gerard said nothing, but pointed the circular satire by pantomime.
He slily put out both his feet, one after another, under Denys's eye, with their German shoes, on which a hundred leagues of travel had produced no effect.They seemed hewn out of a rock.
At this, "I'll twist the smooth varlet's neck that sold me mine,"shouted Denys, in huge wrath, and confirmed the threat with singular oaths peculiar to the mediaeval military.The landlady put her fingers in her ears, thereby exhibiting the hand in a fresh attitude."Tell me when he has done his orisons, somebody,"said she mincingly.And after that they fell to telling stories.
Gerard, when his turn came, told the adventure of Denys and Gerard at the inn in Domfront, and so well, that the hearers were rapt into sweet oblivion of the very existence of mijauree and hands.
But this made her very uneasy, and she had recourse to her grand coup.This misdirected genius had for a twelvemonth past practised yawning, and could do it now at any moment so naturally as to set all creation gaping, could all creation have seen her.By this means she got in all her charms.For first she showed her teeth, then, out of good breeding, you know, closed her mouth with three taper fingers.So the moment Gerard's story got too interesting and absorbing, she turned to and made yawns, and "croix sur la bouche."This was all very fine: but Gerard was an artist, and artists are chilled by gaping auditors.He bore up against the yawns a long time; but finding they came from a bottomless reservoir, lost both heart and temper, and suddenly rising in mid narrative, said, "But I weary our hostess, and I am tired myself: so good night!"whipped a candle off the dresser, whispered Denys, "I cannot stand her," and marched to bed in a moment.
The mijauree coloured and bit her lips.She had not intended her byplay for Gerard's eye: and she saw in a moment she had been rude, and silly, and publicly rebuked.She sat with cheek on fire, and a little natural water in her eyes, and looked ten times comelier and more womanly and interesting than she had done all day.The desertion of the best narrator broke up the party, and the unassuming Denys approached the meditative mijauree, and invited her in the most flattering terms to gamble with him.She started from her reverie, looked him down into the earth's centre with chilling dignity, and consented, for she remembered all in a moment what a show of hands gambling admitted.
The soldier and the mijauree rattled the dice.In which sport she was so taken up with her hands, that she forgot to cheat, and Denys won an "ecu au soleil" of her.She fumbled slowly with her purse, partly because her sex do not burn to pay debts of honour, partly to admire the play of her little knuckles peeping between their soft white cushions.Denys proposed a compromise.
"Three silver franks I win of you, fair hostess.Give me now three kisses of this white hand, and we'll e'en cry quits.""You are malapert," said the lady, with a toss of her head;"besides, they are so dirty.See! they are like ink!" and to convince him she put them out to him and turned them up and down.
They were no dirtier than cream fresh from the cob and she knew it: she was eternally washing and scenting them.
Denys read the objection like the observant warrior he was, seized them and mumbled them.
Finding him so appreciative of her charm, she said timidly, "Will you do me a kindness, good soldier?""A thousand, fair hostess, an you will."
"Nay, I ask but one.'Tis to tell thy comrade I was right sorry to lose his most thrilling story, and I hope he will tell me the rest to-morrow morning.Meantime I shall not sleep for thinking on't.
Wilt tell him that - to pleasure me?"
