of those movements of profound surprise which affect the limbs, creep
down the length of the spine, and cease only in the sole of the feet,
to nail you to the ground. I have often produced effects of this
nature, a sort of animal magnetism which becomes enormously powerful
when the relations are reciprocally precise. But, my dear fellow, this
was not stupefaction, nor was she a common girl. Morally speaking, her
face seemed to say: 'What, is it you, my ideal! The creation of my
thoughts, of my morning and evening dreams! What, are you there? Why
this morning? Why not yesterday? Take me, I am thine, _et cetera_!'
Good, I said to myself, another one! Then I scrutinize her. Ah, my
dear fellow, speaking physically, my incognita is the most adorable
feminine person whom I ever met. She belongs to that feminine variety
which the Romans call _fulva, flava_--the woman of fire. And in chief,
what struck me the most, what I am still taken with, are her two
yellow eyes, like a tiger's, a golden yellow that gleams, living gold,
gold which thinks, gold which loves, and is determined to take refuge
in your pocket."

"My dear fellow, we are full of her!" cried Paul. "She comes here
sometimes--_the girl with the golden eyes_! That is the name we have
given her. She is a young creature--not more than twenty-two, and I
have seen her here in the time of the Bourbons, but with a woman who
was worth a hundred thousand of her."

"Silence, Paul! It is impossible for any woman to surpass this girl;
she is like the cat who rubs herself against your legs; a white girl
with ash-colored hair, delicate in appearance, but who must have downy
threads on the third phalanx of her fingers, and all along her cheeks
a white down whose line, luminous on fine days, begins at her ears and
loses itself on her neck."