Since three days, Mdlle. de Cardoville had left Dr. Baleinier's. The
following scene took place in a little dwelling in the Rue Blanche, to
which Djalma had been conducted in the name of his unknown protector.
Fancy to yourself a pretty, circular apartment, hung with Indian drapery,
with purple figures on a gray ground, just relieved by a few threads of
gold. The ceiling, towards the centre, is concealed by similar hangings,
tied together by a thick, silken cord; the two ends of this cord, unequal
in length, terminated, instead of tassels, in two tiny Indian lamps of
gold filigreed-work, marvellously finished. By one of those ingenious
combinations, so common in barbarous countries, these lamps served also
to burn perfumes. Plates of blue crystal, let in between the openings of
the arabesque, and illumined by the interior light, shone with so limpid
an azure, that the golden lamps seemed starred with transparent
sapphires. Light clouds, of whitish vapor rose incessantly from these
lamps, and spread all around their balmy odor.

Daylight was only admitted to this room (it was about two o'clock in the
afternoon) through a little greenhouse, on the other side of a door of
plate-glass, made to slide into the thickness of the wall, by means of a
groove. A Chinese shade was arranged so as to hide or replace this glass
at pleasure. Some dwarf palm tress, plantains, and other Indian
productions, with thick leaves of a metallic green, arranged in clusters
in this conservatory, formed, as it were, the background to two large
variegated bushes of exotic flowers, which were separated by a narrow
path, paved with yellow and blue Japanese tiles, running to the foot of
the glass. The daylight, already much dimmed by the leaves through which
it passed, took a hue of singular mildness as it mingled with the azure
lustre of the perfumed lamps, and the crimson brightness of the fire in
the tall chimney of oriental porphyry. In the obscurity of this