Mossy.
Its dark, covered carriage-way was ever rumbling, and, with nightfall,
its drawing-rooms always sent forth a luxurious light from the
lace-curtained windows of the second-story balconies.
It was one of the sights of the Rue Royale to see by night its tall,
narrow outline reaching high up toward the stars, with all its windows
aglow.
The Madame had had some tastes of human experience; had been betrothed
at sixteen (to a man she did not love, "being at that time a fool," as
she said); one summer day at noon had been a bride, and at sundown--a
widow. Accidental discharge of the tipsy bridegroom's own pistol. Pass
it by! It left but one lasting effect on her, a special detestation of
quarrels and weapons.
The little maidens whom poor parentage has doomed to sit upon street
door-sills and nurse their infant brothers have a game of "choosing" the
beautiful ladies who sweep by along the pavement; but in Rue Royale
there was no choosing; every little damsel must own Madame Delicieuse or
nobody, and as that richly adorned and regal favorite of old General
Villivicencio came along they would lift their big, bold eyes away up to
her face and pour forth their admiration in a universal--"Ah-h-h-h!"
But, mark you, she was good Madame Delicieuse as well as fair Madame
Delicieuse: her principles, however, not constructed in the austere
Anglo-Saxon style, exactly (what need, with the lattice of the
Confessional not a stone's throw off?).
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