“What lovely eyes! What an exquisite oval face! What a correct chin!”
And then, whether to make sure that Louise’s chin was in fact correct, or for some other reason, the tutor would pass his hand over the young girl’s face, and sometimes go so far as gently to pinch her cheek, which did not amuse Louise at all; whereas Chérubin, on the contrary, was very glad to hear a complimentary remark addressed to his faithful companion.
“Isn’t Louise lovely, my dear master?” he would say at such times.
And Monsieur Gérondif would hasten to assume a sanctimonious air, and would reply, lowering his eyes:
“Yes, this girl has the type of Jael in all its beauty; she seems to me to have the very appearance of a Madonna.”
Thereupon Chérubin would smile again, as he glanced at Louise, and Monsieur Gérondif, thinking of something very different from madonnas, would say to himself:
“This girl will be perfectly bewitching! but if my pupil remains much longer with her--hum! The flesh is weak, the devil is very powerful, especially when he takes the face of a pretty girl. I am not always here; Jacquinot is almost always drunk, and Mère Nicole allows these children to run about together in the fields, looking for flowers among the grain, playing together in the grass,--all very hazardous amusements. I absolutely must look to all this. The best way would be to induce my pupil to return to Paris. I should go with him, there is not the slightest doubt, for his education is not yet complete enough for him to do without a tutor. I shall take care that he needs one for a long time yet, forever, if possible. I shall live in my pupil’s mansion at Paris. That will be infinitely pleasanter than to live in this village; and then I can continue to keep an eye on little Louise at a distance; I will protect her, I will push her on in the world. As for Chérubin, after a few months in Paris, he will have forgotten his little friend of the fields.--All this is reasoned out with the wisdom of Cato, and it only remains to put it into execution.”
And to attain his object, Monsieur Gérondif for some time past had not failed to talk constantly of Paris while giving Chérubin his lessons; he drew a fascinating, enchanting picture of that city; he praised its theatres, its promenades, its monuments, and the innumerable pleasures which one finds there at every step.