That, indeed, was why her Carvillho Gonzales, who also
had been dual in nature, said to himself so often, "I am a devil," and
nearly as often, "I have the heart of an angel."
"Tell me all about your life, my friend," Jean Jacques said eagerly. Now
his eyes no longer hurried here and there, but fastened on hers and
stayed thereabouts--ah, her face surely was like pictures he had seen in
the Louvre that day when he had ambled through the aisles of great men's
glories with the feeling that he could not see too much for nothing in an
hour.
"My life? Ah, m'sieu', has not my father told you of it?" she asked.
He waved a hand in explanation, he cocked his head quizzically.
"Scraps--like the buttons on a coat here and there--that's all," he
answered. "Born in Andalusia, lived in Cadiz, plenty of money, a
beautiful home,"--Carmen's eyes drooped, and her face flushed
slightly--"no brothers or sisters--visits to Madrid on political
business--you at school--then the going of your mother, and you at home
at the head of the house. So much on the young shoulders, the kitchen,
the parlour, the market, the shop, society--and so on. That is the way it
was, so he said, except in the last sad times, when your father, for the
sake of Don Carlos and his rights, near lost his life--ah, I can
understand that: to stand by the thing you have sworn to! France is a
republic, but I would give my life to put a Napoleon or a Bourbon on the
throne.
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