Thank you for your portrait; it is just like you, although they say here that you are greatly changed. I myself think that your face is still exactly the same—only you do not look at people in quite the same way. I have put it on the big mantelpiece and arranged my branch of palms all round it, so that when I enter the room it is the first thing I see. My dear Jean, I have not yet ventured to wear that beautiful bracelet made by the negroes which you sent me, for fear of Olivette and Rose. They think already that I play at being a lady, and that would make it worse. When you are here and we are married, it will be different, and then I shall also wear Aunt Tounelle’s beautiful necklace of little links, and her chain for scissors. If only you would come! For you see I am wearying for the sight of you. I seem gay sometimes when I am with the others, but afterwards my sorrow grows heavier and heavier, and I hide myself and weep. Good-bye, my dear Jean. I embrace you with all my heart. JEANNE MÉRY. VIII Fatou’s hands, the backs of which were deep black, had pink palms. For a long time this discovery dismayed the spahi; he disliked seeing the palms of Fatou’s hands, which in spite of himself made upon him an unpleasant impression like the cold paws of a monkey. Nevertheless these hands were small and well-modelled, and joined to the rounded arm with a very delicate wrist. But this discolouration of the palms; these parti-coloured fingers had something not human about them, and inspired him with horror. That and certain strange, falsetto intonations which escaped her sometimes when she was highly animated, together with certain restless movements, recalled mysterious resemblances which troubled the imagination. In the end, however, Jean had grown accustomed to these things, and no longer troubled his head about them. At times when Fatou seemed to him charming, and he was still in love with her, he would call her laughingly by a curious Yolof name, which signified “little monkey-girl.” Fatou herself was very much mortified by this pet name, and would assume staid airs and a serious expression which amused the spahi. One day (it was exceptionally fine that day; the weather almost cool, the sky very clear)—one day Fritz Muller, who was going to pay Jean a visit, had noiselessly climbed the staircase and halted on the threshold. There he was very much entertained by the following scene, which he witnessed from the door. Jean, smiling the good-tempered smile of a child who is enjoying himself, appeared to be examining Fatou with great attention—stretching out her arms, turning her round, inspecting her from all points of view without uttering a word—and then suddenly, with an air of conviction, he thus expressed the conclusions at which he had arrived, “You’re exactly the same as a monkey.”