"
"All this appears to me prodigiously strange," said De Marsay,
considering her. "But you seem to me a good girl, a strange nature;
you are, upon my word of honor, a living riddle, the answer to which
is very difficult to find."
Paquita understood nothing of what the young man said; she looked at
him gently, opening wide eyes which could never be stupid, so much was
pleasure written in them.
"Come, then, my love," she said, returning to her first idea, "wouldst
thou please me?"
"I would do all that thou wouldst, and even that thou wouldst not,"
answered De Marsay, with a laugh. He had recovered his foppish ease,
as he took the resolve to let himself go to the climax of his good
fortune, looking neither before nor after. Perhaps he counted,
moreover, on his power and his capacity of a man used to adventures,
to dominate this girl a few hours later and learn all her secrets.
"Well," said she, "let me arrange you as I would like."
Paquita went joyously and took from one of the two chests a robe of
red velvet, in which she dressed De Marsay, then adorned his head with
a woman's bonnet and wrapped a shawl round him. Abandoning herself to
these follies with a child's innocence, she laughed a convulsive
laugh, and resembled some bird flapping its wings; but he saw nothing
beyond.
If it be impossible to paint the unheard-of delights which these two
creatures--made by heaven in a joyous moment--found, it is perhaps
necessary to translate metaphysically the extraordinary and almost
fantastic impressions of the young man.
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