remembrance which a man preserves of his first love!

We say, then, that Adrienne was only half-satisfied, though convinced by
the vexation of Rose-Pompon that Djalma had never entertained a serious
attachment for the grisette.

"And why do you detest me, miss?" said Adrienne mildly, when Rose-Pompon
had finished her speech.

"Oh! bless me, madame!" replied the latter, forgetting altogether her
assumption of triumph, and yielding to the natural sincerity of her
character; "pretend that you don't know why I detest you!--Oh, yes!
people go and pick bouquets from the jaws of a panther for people that
they care nothing about, don't they? And if it was only that!" added
Rose-Pompon, who was gradually getting animated, and whose pretty face,
at first contracted into a sullen pout, now assumed an expression of real
and yet half-comic sorrow.

"And if it was only the nosegay!" resumed she. "Though it gave me a
dreadful turn to see Prince Charming leap like a kid upon the stage, I
might have said to myself: 'Pooh! these Indians have their own way of
showing politeness. Here, a lady drops her nosegay, and a gentleman picks
it up and gives it to her; but in India it is quite another thing; the
man picks up the nosegay, and does not return it to the woman--he only
kills a panther before her eyes.' Those are good manners in that country,
I suppose; but what cannot be good manners anywhere is to treat a woman
as I have been treated. And all thanks to you, madame!"

These complaints of Rose-Pompon, at once bitter and laughable, did not at
all agree with what she had previously stated as to Djalma's passionate