Page:Famous stories from foreign countries.djvu/19

 only youth gave a sort of gentleness to this unpleasant Cato-face. He was so unshakable and self-centered, that ten measures of wine could not change him, nor falling in love, nor the political upheavals of a period of revolution. He stood in front of her as the very symbol of reliability, with his two little legs spread wide apart—an old habit of the Swiss—inherited through generations. But she observed this commonplace little face and thought:

“I’ll bring him to the point where he shall say of me: elle me fait troubler.” This was the standpoint from which she regarded men.

“But listen to me,” she began amazed, “you! You have sung? But you do not look in the least like it.”

“I can not sing. I just came to thank you.”

“Then how could you sing your ranz de vaches?”

“Oh—it just came—from the inside of me.”

“Were you homesick?”

“No; I only just thought that Appenzell was better than Paris.”

“Good heavens! And you want to go away from here? What have we done to you? You are slighting us. We, we love you Swiss. You are the honest little mirror in which we see ourselves just as we are. O please say something rude to me!”

“I can’t! I don’t know you well enough.”

“O—then you don’t know Paris very well. How is it possible that no one has fallen in love with you here? In Paris—everyone is loved by some one. Even soldiers have sweethearts.. How can it be that our pretty children and women have not said a good