“Fair Cousin Phoebus,” suddenly said Fleur-de-Lys, “as you know this little gipsy girl, pray beckon to her to come up. It will amuse us.”
“Oh, yes!” cried all the girls, clapping their hands.
“What nonsense!” replied Ph?bus. “She has doubtless forgotten me, and I don’t even know her name. Still, if you wish it, ladies, I will make an attempt;” and leaning over the balcony-rail, he called, “Little one!”
The dancer was not playing her tambourine at the moment. She turned her head towards the point whence this call came, her sparkling eye fell on Phoebus, and she stopped short.
“Little one!” repeated the captain; and he signed to her to come.
The young girl looked at him again; then she blushed as if her cheeks were on fire, and putting her tambourine under her arm, she moved through the astonished spectators towards the door of the house to which Phoebus called her, with slow, hesitating steps, and the troubled gaze of a bird yielding to the fascination of a snake.
A moment later, the tapestry hanging before the door was lifted, and the gipsy appeared on the threshold of the room, red, abashed, breathless, her large eyes cast down, and not daring to advance another step.
Bérangère clapped her hands.
But the dancer stood motionless at the door. Her appearance produced a strange effect upon the group of young girls. It is certain that a vague and indistinct desire to please the handsome officer animated them all alike; that his splendid uniform was the aim of all their coquetries; and that so long as he was present there was a certain secret lurking rivalry among them, which they hardly confessed to themselves, but which none the less appeared every instant in their gestures and words. Still, as they were possessed of an almost equal share of beauty, the contest was a fair one, and each might well hope for victory. The gipsy’s arrival abruptly destroyed this equilibrium. Her beauty was so remarkable that when she appeared on the threshold of the room she seemed to diffuse a sort of light peculiar to herself. Shut into this room, in this dark frame of hangings and wainscotting, she was incomparably more beautiful and more radiant than in the public square. She was like a torch brought from broad daylight into darkness. The noble maidens were dazzled in spite of themselves. Each of them felt her beauty in some sort impaired. Therefore their battle-front （if we may be pardoned the expression） changed at once, without exchanging a word. Still, they understood one another to perfection. The instincts of women read and reply to one another more rapidly than the understandings of men. An enemy had arrived; all felt it, all rallied for mutual support. A drop of wine is enough to redden a whole glass of water; the entrance of a prettier woman than themselves is enough to tinge a whole party of pretty women with a certain amount of ill-humor,—especially when there is but one man present.
Thus their reception of the gipsy girl was marvelously cold. They examined her from head to foot, then looked at one another, and that was enough: they understood one another. But the young girl waited for them to speak, so much agitated that she dared not raise her eyes.
The captain was the first to break the silence.
“On my word,” he said in his tone of bold assurance, “a charming creature! What do you think of her, fair cousin?”
The observation, which a more delicate admirer would at least have uttered in an undertone, was not adapted to soothe the feminine jealousies arrayed against the gipsy girl.
Fleur-de-Lys answered the captain with a sweet affectation of disdain: “She’s not bad-looking.”
The others whispered together.
At last Madame Alo?se, who was not the least jealous of the party since she was jealous for her daughter, addressed the dancer. “Come in, little one.”
“Come in, little one!” repeated, with comic dignity, Bérangère, who would have reached about to the gipsy’s waist.
Esmeralda approached the noble lady.
“My pretty child,” said Ph?bus with emphasis, taking a few steps towards her, “I don’t know whether I have the supreme happiness of being recognized by you—”
She interrupted him with a smile and a glance of infinite sweetness,— “Oh, yes!”
“She has a good memory,” observed Fleur-de-Lys.
“Now, then,” continued Phoebus, “you escaped very nimbly the other night. Did I frighten you?”
“Oh, no!” said the gipsy.
There was an indefinite something in the tone in which this “Oh, no!” was uttered directly after the “Oh, yes!” which wounded Fleur-de-Lys.