"I lifted my eyes: his face, instead of being irate, lowering and furrowed, was overflowing with the smile, coloured with the bloom I had seen brightening it that evening at the Hotel Crécy. He was not angry--not even grieved. For the real injury he showed himself full of clemency; under the real provocation, patient as a saint." Take the "Watchguard" scene. "M. Paul came and stood behind me. He asked at what I was working; and I said I was making a watchguard. He asked, 'For whom?' And I answered, 'For a gentleman--one of my friends.'" Whereupon M. Paul flies into a passion, and accuses Lucy of behaving to him, "'With what pungent vivacities--what an impetus of mutiny--what a _fougue_ of injustice.'... '_Chut! à l'instant!_ There! there I went--_vive comme la poudre_.' He was sorry--he was very sorry: for my sake he grieved over the hopeless peculiarity. This _emportement_, this _chaleur_--generous, perhaps, but excessive--would yet, he feared, do me a mischief. It was a pity. I was not--he believed, in his soul--wholly without good qualities; and would I but hear reason, and be more sedate, more sober, less _en l'air_, less _coquette_, less taken by show, less prone to set an undue value on outside excellence--to make much of the attentions of people remarkable chiefly for so many feet of stature, _des couleurs de poupée, un nez plus ou moins bien fait_, and an enormous amount of fatuity--I might yet prove a useful, perhaps an exemplary character. But, as it was----And here the little man's voice was for a moment choked. "I would have looked up at him, or held out my hand, or said a soothing word; but I was afraid, if I stirred, I should either laugh or cry; so odd, in all this, was the mixture of the touching and the absurd. "I thought he had nearly done: but no, he sat down that he might go on at his ease. "'While he, M. Paul, was on these painful topics, he would dare my anger for the sake of my good, and would venture to refer to a change he had noticed in my dress.'" * * * * * "'And if you condemn a bow of ribbon for a lady, monsieur, you would necessarily disapprove of a thing like this for a gentleman?' holding up my bright little chainlet of silk and gold. His sole reply was a groan--I suppose over my levity. "After sitting some minutes in silence, and watching the progress of the chain, at which I now wrought more assiduously than ever, he inquired: "'Whether what he had just said would have the effect of making me entirely detest him?' "I hardly remember what answer I made, or how it came about; I don't think I spoke at all, but I know we managed to bid good night on friendly terms: and even after M. Paul had reached the door, he turned back just to explain that he would not be understood to speak in entire condemnation of the scarlet dress.'... "'And the flowers under my bonnet, monsieur?' I asked. 'They are very little ones.'