violets that accompanied her, I understood how the memory of this wife
had arrested the Count on the threshold of debauchery, and how
impossible it would be ever to forget a creature who really was a
flower to the touch, a flower to the eye, a flower of fragrance, a
heavenly flower to the soul. . . . Honorine inspired devotion,
chivalrous devotion, regardless of reward. A man on seeing her must
say to himself:

"'Think, and I will divine your thought; speak, and I will obey. If
my life, sacrificed in torments, can procure you one day's happiness,
take my life, I will smile like a martyr at the stake, for I shall
offer that day to God, as a token to which a father responds on
recognizing a gift to his child.' Many women study their expression,
and succeed in producing effects similar to those which would have
struck you at first sight of the Countess; only, in her, it was all
the outcome of a delightful nature, that inimitable nature went at
once to the heart. If I tell you all this, it is because her soul, her
thoughts, the exquisiteness of her heart, are all we are concerned
with, and you would have blamed me if I had not sketched them for you.

"I was very near forgetting my part as a half-crazy lout, clumsy, and
by no means chivalrous.

"'I am told, madame, that you are fond of flowers?'

"'I am an artificial flower-maker,' said she. 'After growing flowers,
I imitate them, like a mother who is artist enough to have the
pleasure of painting her children. . . . That is enough to tell you
that I am poor and unable to pay for the concession I am anxious to
obtain from you?'