"
"He first met Claudine on this wise," continued Nathan. "It was one of
the unfilled days, when Youth is a burden to itself; days when youth,
reduced by the overweening presumption of Age to a condition of
potential energy and dejection, emerges therefrom (like Blondet under
the Restoration), either to get into mischief or to set about some
colossal piece of buffoonery, half excused by the very audacity of its
conception. La Palferine was sauntering, cane in hand, up and down the
pavement between the Rue de Grammont and the Rue de Richelieu, when in
the distance he descried a woman too elegantly dressed, covered, as he
phrased it, with a great deal of portable property, too expensive and
too carelessly worn for its owner to be other than a princess of the
court or of the stage, it was not easy at first to say which. But
after July 1830, in his opinion, there is no mistaking the indications
--the princess can only be a princess of the stage.
"The Count came up and walked by her side as if she had given him an
assignation. He followed her with a courteous persistence, a
persistence in good taste, giving the lady from time to time, and
always at the right moment, an authoritative glance, which compelled
her to submit to his escort.
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