The fair soul seldom guessed anything, except a fair soul: she so easily divined her like; with such difficulty her counterpart. Bouverot's advances seemed to her the usual forward and side steps of manly courtesy; and his knightly celibacy did not allow her entirely to understand him. Do not the lilies of innocence bloom earlier than the roses of shame, as the purple color, in the beginning, only dyes pale, and not till afterward puts on the red glow, when it lies before the sun? She kept herself this evening near her mother, because she perceived in her an unwonted seriousness. When Froulay had taken off from his head the birthday garland, wherein were planted more thorns and stalks than flowers,--when he had taken off the crown of thorns, and stood in his night-cap amidst his family,--he addressed himself to the business whereupon he had been thinking all the evening. "My little dove," said he to his daughter, borrowing a good expression from the Bastile,[143]--"my little dove, leave me and _Guillemette_ alone." He now laid bare his upper teeth by a characteristic grin, and said he had, as he hoped, something agreeable to communicate to her. "You know," he continued, "what I owe to the German gentleman." He meant not thanks, but money and consideration. We love to dwell upon it as a matter of great praise in the family of the Quintii,[144] that they never possessed gold: I adduce--without arraying a thousand other families of whom the same is to be sworn--only Froulay's. Certain families, like antimony, have no chemical affinity whatever with that metal, however much they might wish it; certainly Froulay wished it: he looked very much to his interest (to nothing else), he willingly (although only in cases of collision) set conscience and honor aside; but he got no further than to great outlays and great projects, simply because he sought money, not as the end and aim of his ambition, but only as the means of ambition and enterprise. Even for some pictures which Bouverot had purchased for the Prince in Italy he still owed that individual the purchase-shilling which he had taken out of the treasury. By his bonds as if by circulars, he stood in widely-extended connections. He would gladly have transposed his marriage contract into a bond, and had, with his lady, at least that most intimate community--of goods; for, under present circumstances, divorce and bankruptcy stood in neighborly relations to each other; but, as was said, many men, with the best talons,--like the eagle of the Romish king,[145]--have nothing in them. He continued: "Now, perhaps, this _géne_ will cease. Have you hitherto made any observations upon him?" She shook her head. "I have," he replied, "for a long time, and such as were really consoling to me,--_j'avais le nez bon quant à cela_,--he has a real liking for my Liana."