"The very man I should at this moment most wish to see. Call him."
The teacher ran to the salon door. M. Paul was summoned. He entered: a small, dark and spare man, in spectacles.
"Mon cousin," began madame, "I want your opinion. We know your skill in physiognomy; use it now. Read that countenance."
The little man fixed on me his spectacles. A resolute compression of the lips, and gathering of the brow, seemed to say that he meant to see through me, and that a veil would be no veil for him.
"I read it," he pronounced.
"Et qu 'en dites vous?"
"Mais—bien des choses," was the oracular answer.
"Bad or good?"
"Of each kind, without doubt," pursued the diviner.
"May one trust her word?"
"Are you negotiating a matter of importance?"
"She wishes me to engage her as bonne or gouvernante; tells a tale full of integrity, but gives no reference."
