Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida'.djvu/62

54 Fancy the barbarism of crystallising and crunching a violet! The flower of Clémence Isauze, and all the poets after her, condemned to the degradation of becoming a bonbon! Can anything be more typical of the prosaic atrocity of this age? Impossible!"

"With such acute feelings, you must find the dinner^card excessively restricted. With so much sympathy for a violet, what must be your philanthropy for a pheasant!" said Erceldoune, quietly, who was not disposed to pursue the Monody of a Violet in the Café Minuit, though the man to a certain extent amused him.

At that moment the foreigner rose a little hastily, left his ice-cream unfinished, and, with a gay graceful adieu, went out of the salon, which was now filling. handsome fellow, and talks well," thought Erceldoune, wringing the amber Moselle from his long moustaches, when he was left alone at the marble table in the heat, and light, and movement of the glittering caf6. "I know the Maternity well enough, and he is one of the best of the members, I dare say. He did not waste much of his science on me; he saw it would be profitless work. On my word, the wit and ability and good manners those men fritter away in their