His open adoption by the Legers as their cousin also led to his making many other acquaintances, since, when they had friends to dine, the visitors often included Roger in their return invitations, and when Manon Prudhot was invited to a young people's party he was now generally asked to accompany her.
It was at her suggestion that he took up dancing. He assented willingly, as at home he had learnt only a few country dances and he felt that he was now reaching an age where he should be able to lead a lady out to a minuet, quadrille or gavotte without embarrassment. Manon was in the habit of going once or twice a week to the Assembly Rooms or other public dance places with Julien Quatrevaux, but she was anxious not to make her affair with him too conspicuous, so they welcomed Roger as a third. They were able to introduce him to plenty of partners and he soon attached himself to one girl in particular, named Tonton Yeury.
Tonton was the daughter of a goldsmith, and a dark, vivacious little thing. She had a retrousse1 nose, brown almond-shaped eyes and was never serious for a moment. Few girls could have been in stronger contrast with Athenais, and that was perhaps one of the reasons why Roger was attracted to her. His love and longing for the imperious Mademoiselle de Rochambeau remained unabated, but in Tonton's merry company he was able temporarily to forget his secret passion.
By early January one of the severest winters that France had known for many years developed with extreme rigour, so that the canals and the river Vilaine were frozen a foot thick, and after Mass each Sunday the richer inhabitants of Rennes made carnival on the ice. Roger and his friends joined in the skating, sledging and tobogganing with great zest; but in all other respects they suffered considerably from the severity of the weather. None of them had any heat in their bedrooms and the offices in which Roger and Julien laboured for long hours each day had only small wood-burning stoves. In consequence they had to work in the frowsty cold, muffled up in their overcoats, and each time they dressed or undressed their teeth chattered from the icy blast that seemed to whistle in through every crevice.
On his third skating expedition Roger again saw Athenais. Count Lucien and a dark, good-looking young man somewhat older than himself were with her, so he did not dare approach; but, to his joy she gave him a friendly wave as the two youths propelled her swiftly past in a lovely little single-seated sleigh fashioned like a swan.
That night he was torn between bliss at her recognition of him and agonising jealousy at the thought that the dark young man must inevitably be in love with her and that she, quite probably, returned his love. Yet the sight of her served to revive all his old ambitions and he began to seek for an opportunity to secure advancement in the firm.
It came a few evenings later. Towards the end of dinner, Maitre Leger and Brochard were discussing a case in which one of the firm's richest clients was involved and, seizing on a point that did not appear to have occurred to either of them, Roger felt that without appearing impertinent he might draw their attention to it.
The point was quite a minor one but both men looked a little surprised that he should have sufficient shrewdness to appreciate that it might be of some value. Maitre Leger would no doubt have thought no more of the matter had not Brochard remarked, with a smile:
'You display good reasoning powers. Monsieur Breuc, and we shall make a lawyer of you yet,' which gave Roger the opening to reply:
'Thank you, Monsieur, but 'twill take a long time, I fear, from the little experience I gain as a Latin copyist.'
'I would that we could give you something of more interest,' said Maitre Leger, 'but to set anyone without proper training to the drafting of documents usually results in additional labour for someone else later on.'
Brochard gave a somewhat spiteful little laugh. ' 'Twould be easy enough for me to teach Monsieur Bruec the rudiments of the business in the evenings, but I am sure he is much too occupied in gallivanting about the town with his friends to desire that!'
'On the contrary. Monsieur,' Roger took him up swiftly. 'If you would be so kind, I place my leisure entirely at your disposal.'
A new interest suddenly showed in Brochard's alert eyes and, with a shrug of his broad shoulders, he replied:
'So be it, then. Two evenings a week should suffice. Let us say Tuesdays and Thursdays, and after dinner we will adjourn to old Fusier's office. Being smaller it is warmer than the others and I will have the fire kept up after he has gone.'
The legal coaching that resulted from this arrangement did not seriously interfere with Roger's amusements and made him feel that at last he was getting somewhere, if only towards a better job than the wearisome monotony of endless copying. He found, too, that beneath Monsieur Emile Brochard's rather severe and taciturn manner there lay a very vital and likeable personality.
Brochard was a Bordelals, and he had inherited a strong share of that tradition which made the great city of Bordeaux, from having been a fief of the English Crown for so many centuries, still markedly English in customs and sympathies. He had a passionate admiration for the British, formed mainly from the quite erroneous belief that everything they did was based on reason and, as a freethinker, he regarded 'Reason' as the Supreme Deity. He was, like the great majority of educated people in France at that time, convinced that his country was on the verge of ruin, and that only the granting of a liberal Constitution by the King, coupled with the abolition of all aristocratic privileges, could possibly save it from complete disaster. And, again and again, he pointed out to Roger legal cases where the verdict would go to a noble, simply because he was a noble, whereas under English law the verdict would have gone to a commoner, not because he was a commoner, but because reason and justice were on his side.
Roger proved so attentive and appreciative an audience to these disquisitions that they fell into the habit of talking for an hour or so on such matters after the evening's lessons were concluded.
On one occasion, towards the end of February, Brochard remarked that the English were sensible enough to turn even their apparent misfortunes to advantage, as was instanced by the swift reorientation of their policy towards the United States. Having lost the war they had wasted no time in bitterness and rancour, but had at once set about relieving the acute shortage of manufactured goods that had resulted from their own five-year blockade of the Americas. Before there had even been time for the British Army to be evacuated British merchants by the hundred had crossed the Atlantic to offer the hand of friendship and, as the Americans possessed hardly any industry of their own, Britain was now enjoying a tremendous trade boom.
Roger replied a little dubiously: 'That may be so, but when I was in England last year I heard many people express the opinion that the country was showing grave signs of decadence and was, in fact, pretty well on its last legs. It is the general view here, too, that, while England succeeded by the skin of her teeth in securing a reasonably good peace, the American war cost her exceeding dear, both in money and prestige; and that the many victories of the Continental Allies during it have more than made up to France for the defeats she suffered in the earlier Seven Years' War.'
'You have been listening to the talk of wishful-thinking fools,' scoffed Brochard. 'In the war of '56-'63, we lost our hold on India and were thrown out of Canada for good. Nothing we have gained in the more recent conflict is one-tenth the value of either of those great dominions. And Britain still controls the seas to the detriment of our commerce. As for the English having become decadent, I am amazed to hear that any among them are pessimistic enough to think it. Decadence comes only to countries that are governed by the old, and since last December Britain has had for her Prime Minister young Mr. Pitt, who is not yet twenty-five years of age. What greater proof of vitality and will to develop new ideas could any country give than that?'
It was the first that Roger had heard of this remarkable appointment of so young a man as Billy Pitt to the highest office under the British Crown. His mother now corresponded with him regularly, but her letters contained little other than local news and she never mentioned politics.
As long as the fierce frosts held the land in their grip he got what fun he could skating every Sunday. Twice more in February and March he saw Athenais in her little white and gold swan sleigh, but each time she was accompanied by several people so he did not dare to approach her.
The bitter cold continued right up to April so that people almost began to despair of the winter ever ending, and in many parts of the country starvation was widespread. Paris had for two months been without wood for fires and the situation there was said to be desperate. The King had given lavishly from his private purse to succour the thousands who were starving and ordered a great acreage of the royal forests to be cut down for fuel. He had also forbidden the use of private horse-drawn vehicles in the streets of the capital, since the recklessly-driven
