Notre Dame de Paris - Bartleby.com

The girl looked at him again, and then blushed as if a flame had risen to her cheeks, and taking her
tambourine under her arm, she made her way through the gaping crowd towards the door of the house
whence Phœbus called her, her step slow and uncertain, and with the troubled glance of a bird yielding to
the fascination of a serpent.
A moment later the tapestry was raised, and the gipsy appeared on the threshold of the room, flushed,
shy, panting, her great eyes lowered, not daring to advance a step farther.
Berangère clapped her hands.
But the dancing girl stood motionless in the doorway. Her sudden appearance produced a curious effect
on the group. There is no doubt that a vague and indistinct desire to please the handsome officer
animated the whole party, and that the brilliant uniform was the target at which they aimed all their
coquettish darts; also, from the time of his being present there had arisen among them a certain covert
rivalry, scarcely acknowledged to themselves, but which was none the less constantly revealed in their
gestures and in their remarks. Nevertheless, as they all possessed much the same degree of beauty, they
fought with the same weapons, and each might reasonably hope for victory. The arrival of the gipsy
roughly destroyed this equilibrium. Her beauty was of so rare a quality that the moment she entered the
room she seemed to illuminate it with a sort of light peculiar to herself. In this restricted space, in this
rich frame of sombre hangings and dark panelling, she was incomparably more beautiful and radiant than
in the open square. It was like bringing a torch out of the daylight into the shade. The noble maidens
were dazzled by her in spite of themselves. Each one felt that her beauty had in some degree suffered.
Consequently they instantly and with one accord changed their line of battle (if we may be allowed the
term) without a single word having passed between them. For the instincts of women understand and
respond to one another far quicker than the intelligence of men. A common foe stood in their midst; they
all felt it, and combined for defence. One drop of wine is sufficient to tinge a whole glass of water; to
diffuse a certain amount of ill temper throughout a gathering of pretty women, it is only necessary for
one still prettier to arrive upon the scene, especially if there is but one man of the company.
Thus the gipsy girl’s reception was glacial in its coldness. They looked her up and down, then turned to
each other, and all was said; they were confederates. Meanwhile the girl, waiting in vain for them to
address her, was so covered with confusion that she dared not raise her eyes.
The captain was the first to break the silence. “I’ faith,” he said, with his air of fatuous assurance, “a
bewitching creature! What say you, fair cousin?”
This remark, which a more tactful admirer would at least have made in an undertone, was not calculated
to allay the feminine jealousy so sharply on the alert in the presence of the gipsy girl.
Fleur-de-Lys answered her fiancé in an affected tone of contemptuous indifference, “Ah, not amiss.”
The others put their heads together and whispered.
At last Madame Aloïse, not the least jealous of the party because she was so for her daughter, accosted
the dancer:
“Come hither, little one.”
“Come hither, little one,” repeated, with comical dignity, Berangère, who would have reached about to
her elbow.