The one who was leaning in the chair -- that is to say, the
joyous, the laughing one -- was a beautiful girl of from
eighteen to twenty, with brown complexion and brown hair,
splendid, from eyes which sparkled beneath strongly-marked
brows, and particularly from her teeth, which seemed to
shine like pearls between her red coral lips. Her every
movement seemed the accent of a sunny nature, she did not
walk -- she bounded.

The other, she who was writing, looked at her turbulent
companion with an eye as limpid, as pure, and as blue as the
azure of the day. Her hair, of a shaded fairness, arranged
with exquisite taste, fell in silky curls over her lovely
mantling cheeks; she passed across the paper a delicate
hand, whose thinness announced her extreme youth. At each
burst of laughter that proceeded from her friend, she
raised, as if annoyed, her white shoulders in a poetical and
mild manner, but they were wanting in that richfulness of
mold which was likewise to be wished in her arms and hands.

"Montalais! Montalais!" said she at length, in a voice soft
and caressing as a melody, "you laugh too loud -- you laugh
like a man! You will not only draw the attention of
messieurs the guards, but you will not hear Madame's bell
when Madame rings."

This admonition neither made the young girl called Montalais
cease to laugh and gesticulate. She only replied: "Louise,
you do not speak as you think, my dear; you know that