He only remembered that he
had once been a gentleman, that--if a life of honor and of self-negation
can make any so--he was one still. He advanced and bowed with the old
serene elegance that his bow had once been famed for; and she, well used
to be even overcritical in such trifles, thought, "That man has once
lived in courts!"
"Pardon me, madame, I do not come to trespass so far upon your
benignity," he answered, as he bent before her. "I come to express,
rather, my regret that you should have made one single error."
"Error!"--a haughty surprise glanced from her eyes as they swept over
him. Such a word had never been used to her in the whole course of her
brilliant and pampered life of sovereignty and indulgence.
"One common enough, madame, in your Order. The error to suppose that
under the rough cloth of a private trooper's uniform there cannot
possibly be such aristocratic monopolies as nerves to wound."
"I do not comprehend you." She spoke very coldly; she repented her
profoundly of her concession in admitting a Chasseur d'Afrique to her
presence.
"Possibly not. Mine was the folly to dream that you would ever do so.
I should not have intruded on you now, but for this reason: the
humiliation you were pleased to pass on me I could neither refuse nor
resent to the dealer of it. Had I done so, men who are only too loyal
to me would have resented with me, and been thrashed or been shot, as
payment.
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