I protest that I don't see how Coquelin bore the contrast. I frankly admit that, in her place, I would have given all my admiration to the Vicomte. At all events, the chief result of any such comparison must have been to show how, in spite of real trials and troubles, Coquelin had retained a certain masculine freshness and elasticity, and how, without any sorrows but those of his own wanton making, the Vicomte had utterly rubbed off his primal bloom of manhood. There was that about Gaston de Treuil that reminded you of an actor by daylight. His little row of foot-lights had burned itself out. But this is assuredly a more pedantic view of the case than any that Mlle. de Bergerac was capable of taking. The Vicomte had but to learn his part and declaim it, and the illusion was complete. Mlle. de Bergerac may really have been a great simpleton, and my theory of her feelings--vague and imperfect as it is--may be put together quite after the fact. But I see you protest; you glance at the picture; you frown. _C'est bon_; give me your hand. She received the Vicomte's gallantries, then, with a modest, conscious dignity, and courtesied to exactly the proper depth when he made her one of his inimitable bows. One evening--it was, I think, about ten days after Coquelin's arrival--she was sitting reading to my mother, who was ill in bed. The Vicomte had been dining with us, and after dinner we had gone into the drawing-room. At the drawing-room door Coquelin had made his bow to my father, and carried me off to his own apartment. Mlle. de Bergerac and the two gentlemen had gone into the drawing-room together. At dusk I had come back to the château, and, going up to my mother, had found her in company with her sister-in-law. In a few moments my father came in, looking stern and black. "Sister," he cried, "why did you leave us alone in the drawing-room? Didn't you see I wanted you to stay?" Mlle. de Bergerac laid down her book and looked at her brother before answering. "I had to come to my sister," she said: "I couldn't leave her alone." My mother, I'm sorry to say, was not always just to my aunt. She used to lose patience with her sister's want of coquetry, of ambition, of desire to make much of herself. She divined wherein my aunt had offended. "You're very devoted to your sister, suddenly," she said. "There are duties and duties, mademoiselle. I'm very much obliged to you for reading to me. You can put down the book." "The Vicomte swore very hard when you went out," my father went on. Mlle. de Bergerac laid aside her book. "Dear me!" she said, "if he was going to swear, it's very well I went." "Are you afraid of the Vicomte?" said my mother. "You're twenty-two years old. You're not a little girl." "Is she twenty-two?" cried my father. "I told him she was twenty-one." "Frankly, brother," said Mlle. de Bergerac, "what does he want? Does he want to marry me?" My father stared a moment. "_Pardieu!_" he cried.