Fairy Fingers — Part 148

"That is an unexpected pleasure,--that is really delightful!" exclaimed Maurice, enthusiastically.

Bertha did not reply; but she certainly looked inclined to pout, and as though she had no very distinct perception of the delight in question.

In a few days Maurice and Ronald were on the great ocean.

A fortnight later the Marquis and Marchioness de Fleury, and the secretary of the former, M. de Bois, were also on their way to the New World.

Bertha worried her uncle by her sad face, listless manner, and low spirits, to say nothing of her loss of appetite (to his thinking the most important feature of her _malaise_), until he was convinced that she had lost all interest in Paris, and that her sadness would be increased by a longer sojourn in the gay capital. When she admitted this, he kindly inquired if she desired to travel.

Whither would she go? To Italy? To England? To Russia?

_America!_--land of savages!--land of Pawnees and Choctaws!--land where cooking must be in its crude infancy! Her uncle would not listen to such a barbarous proposition; and, finding that he could obtain no other answer from his wilful and incomprehensible ward, he carried her back to Bordeaux, consoling himself with the reflection that although the visit to Paris had not been permanently advantageous to his niece, the culinary knowledge acquired by Lucien was a full compensation.

"Chiffons!" "_talking chiffons!_" "_writing chiffons!_"--will any one have the goodness to furnish us with a literal yet lucid interpretation of this enigmatical form of speech so incessantly employed in the Parisian _beau monde_? Among the translatable words of the French language,--among the expressive terms which cannot be rendered by equally significant expressions in our own more copious tongue,--among the phraseology invented to convey ideas which the phrases themselves certainly do not suggest,--the common application of this curt little word "_chiffons_" holds a distinguished place. Look for "_chiffons_" in the dictionary, and you will see it simply defined as "_rags_;" yet "_chiffons_" represent the very opposite of rags feminine, and conjure up a multitudinous army of feminine fashions, fripperies, fancies, follies, indispensable aids and adjuncts of the feminine toilet.