Page:Eekhoud - The New Carthage.djvu/114

86 obligated, conscientiously did their duty, and, since the girls were as pretty and far more amiable than the rich heiresses, the penmen considered themselves as happy as the Béjards, Saint-Fardiers and Dupoissys. Béjard's assiduous attention to Mademoiselle Dobouziez worried all the mothers, who either wanted the shipowner for their daughters or the daughter of the wealthy manufacturer for their sons.

But, and nobody could have foreseen such an occurence, the dancer especially honored by Mademoiselle Dobouziez at this memorable ball was the grain-dealer Theodore Bergmans, or Door den Berg, as he was familiarly called by his friends, that is to say, by the whole population.

Door Bergmans was an exception, in the breadth of his views and the loftiness of his spirit, to the selfish and tardigrade men with whom he came in contact. He was young, hardly twenty-five years old, and did not look his age. Vigorous and healthy, he had the stature of a mortal destined to command, and he was taller by a head than the tallest man in the assembled company. His thick, flaxen hair curled slightly above his high forehead, his kindly, penetrating eyes were set beneath arched eyebrows, the pupils of that blue-violet which becomes darker or lighter in the reflection of thought in the same way as does a sheet of water beneath the play of clouds. His nose was aquiline, his mouth small and hidden by a cavalier mustache, his beard was like those seen in portraits by Franz Hals. His voice, warm and vibrating, had that compelling tone which sways the minds of crowds from the very first words, one of those fatal voices that subjugate and inspire, so musical that the significance of the words is not immediately apparent. The son of a