"
"What do you mean? Where are you going?"
The thought of a heroic falsehood had come into his head.
"I--I am going to the Circus in the Champs Elysees; it opens to-night,
and I can't miss it."
"Why not?" said Clementine, questioning him by a look that was half-
anger.
"Must I tell you why?" he said, coloring; "must I confide to you what
I hide from Adam, who thinks my only love is Poland."
"Ah! a secret in our noble captain?"
"A disgraceful one--which you will perhaps understand, and pity."
"You, disgraced?"
"Yes, I, Comte Paz; I am madly in love with a girl who travels all
over France with the Bouthor family,--people who have the rival circus
to Franconi; but they play only at fairs. I have made the director at
the Cirque-Olympique engage her."
"Is she handsome?"
"To my thinking," said Paz, in a melancholy tone. "Malaga (that's her
stage name) is strong, active, and supple. Why do I prefer her to all
other women in the world?--well, I can't tell you. When I look at her,
with her black hair tied with a blue satin ribbon, floating on her
bare and olive-colored shoulders, and when she is dressed in a white
tunic with a gold edge, and a knitted silk bodice that makes her look
like a living Greek statue, and when I see her carrying those flags in
her hand to the sound of martial music, and jumping through the paper
hoops which tear as she goes through, and lighting so gracefully on
the galloping horse to such applause,--no hired clapping,--well, all
that moves me.
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