The two lovers went on towards the dining-room, but Lucien’s patron signed to the pretty pair to stop.  And they stopped.

“I have just been talking of your servants, my child,” said he to Esther.  “I must introduce them to you.”

The Spaniard rang twice.  The women he had called Europe and Asie came in, and it was at once easy to see the reason of these names.

Asie, who looked as if she might have been born in the Island of Java, showed a face to scare the eye, as flat as a board, with the copper complexion peculiar to Malays, with a nose that looked as if it had been driven inwards by some violent pressure.  The strange conformation of the maxillary bones gave the lower part of this face a resemblance to that of the larger species of apes.  The brow, though sloping, was not deficient in intelligence produced by habits of cunning.  Two fierce little eyes had the calm fixity of a tiger’s, but they never looked you straight in the face.  Asie seemed afraid lest she might terrify people.  Her lips, a dull blue, were parted over prominent teeth of dazzling whiteness, but grown across.  The leading expression of this animal countenance was one of meanness.  Her black hair, straight and greasy-looking like her skin, lay in two shining bands, forming an edge to a very handsome silk handkerchief.  Her ears were remarkably pretty, and graced with two large dark pearls.  Small, short, and squat, Asie bore a likeness to the grotesque figures the Chinese love to paint on screens, or, more exactly, to the Hindoo idols which seem to be imitated from some non-existent type, found, nevertheless, now and again by travelers.  Esther shuddered as she looked at this monstrosity, dressed out in a white apron over a stuff gown.

“Asie,” said the Spaniard, to whom the woman looked up with a gesture that can only be compared to that of a dog to its master, “this is your mistress.”

And he pointed to Esther in her wrapper.

Asie looked at the young fairy with an almost distressful expression; but at the same moment a flash, half hidden between her thick, short eyelashes, shot like an incendiary spark at Lucien, who, in a magnificent dressing-gown thrown open over a fine Holland linen shirt and red trousers, with a fez on his head, beneath which his fair hair fell in thick curls, presented a godlike appearance.

Italian genius could invent the tale of Othello; English genius could put it on the stage; but Nature alone reserves the power of throwing into a single glance an expression of jealousy grander and more complete than England and Italy together could imagine.  This look, seen by Esther, made her clutch the Spaniard by the arm, setting her nails in it as a cat sets its claws to save itself from falling into a gulf of which it cannot see the bottom.

The Spaniard spoke a few words, in some unfamiliar tongue, to the Asiatic monster, who crept on her knees to Esther’s feet and kissed them.