‘In that case I very much advise you to go in for Bogomoletz. The wonders it has done for me! Why, my hair, which was quite red, has positively begun to go black at the roots.’
‘My faith, Madame Innouïs, is pinned to this diet I follow. Perhaps you would care to hear of it. Well it was entirely invented by a very very good friend of mine and its basis is germ of wheat oil, milk fortified with powdered milk and molasses, and meat fortified with yoghourt. Now in my case this diet, very carefully followed over a period of months, has succeeded in strengthening, beyond belief, the tissues of certain very very important organs –’
‘The usual conversation of the over-forties, I see,’ said Albertine, joining them. ‘Let me just warn you all not to brush your faces. Little Lambesé was told to brush his face, to induce circulation or some rubbish, and he is still in his room, poor boy, marked as if he had encountered a savage beast.’
‘After all, the face is not a suède shoe,’ said Madame de Tournon. ‘Is that why he’s not here? He told me he was coming as a famous aunt.’
‘Yes, and he wouldn’t have been the only one.’
‘I think it’s very hard luck, and I’m sorry,’ said Madame Rocher. ‘Now supposing I make more money than I expect to at the Gala des Innouïs I will try and give Lambesé a Bogo; if anybody deserves one it is he.’
‘I thought the lift had been such a great success, and if so why did he brush?’
‘He thought nothing of it,’ said Madame Marel. ‘If you want that extra radiance, he was told, brush – brush. He did have some particular reason for wanting it – he brushed – and there he was looking like Paul in Les Malheurs de Sophie.’
It was past six when the ball ended. The famous parents gathered up their famous children, wilting and dishevelled, as accessories to fancy dress always are by the time a party is over, and carried them away. The last to leave was Henri II, with the three little Valois kings and la Reine Margot, but without Catherine de Medicis.
‘Where is my wife?’ he said to everybody he saw.
‘And where,’ said Albertine, more in sorrow than surprise, ‘is Charles-Edouard?’
7
The next day, after luncheon, Charles-Edouard and Sigi set out to walk to the Jockey Club, both feeling the need for a little fresh air after their various excesses of the previous night. They crossed the Place de la Concorde as only Frenchmen can, that is to say they sauntered through the traffic, chatting away, looking neither to right nor to left and assuming that the vehicles whizzing by would miss them, even if only by inches. (A miss is as good as a mile might be taken as their motto by French pedestrians.) The skirts of their coats were sometimes blown up by passing motors, but they were, in fact, missed, and reached the other side in safety.
‘So what did the Reine Margot tell you?’
‘She isn’t really the Reine Margot, she’s Jeanne-Marie de Tournon.’
‘And what did she tell you?’
‘Nothing at all – it’s easy.’
Sigi was sometimes quite as obstinate as his mother when it came to ‘What are the news’.
‘Ha!’ said Charles-Edouard. ‘So you lay together on that sofa, hour after hour, gazing into each other’s eyes and saying nothing at all. How very strange!’
‘She lives in the country all the year round. She is dull. I was dull when you first knew me and I lived always in the country.’
‘Are you not dull now?’
‘I am not. I can read and write and do difficult sums and I’m excellent company. I know all about the Emperor and I can say the words of – oh Papa, Papa, do look –’
Some workmen were engaged upon Coustou’s horses. The right-hand one was being cleaned and the other, with the arm of its groom over its back, still had a long ladder poised against the stone mane.
‘Papa! Can I?’
Charles-Edouard looked round. There was nobody very near them, and no policeman nearer than the Concorde bridge.
‘Do you know the words?’
‘Yes. You’ll hear, when I’m up there.’
‘On your honour, Sigi?’
‘Honneur,’ he cried, taking off his coat, ‘à la Grande Armée!’
He nipped up the ladder and, clambering with the agility of a monkey on to the horse’s back, began to chant: ‘A la voix du vainqueur d’ Austerlitz l’empire d’ Allemagne tombe. La confédération du Rhin commence. Les royaumes de Wurtembourg et de Bavière sont crées. Venise se réunit a la couronne de fer, et I’ltalie toute entière se range sous les lois de son libérateur. Honneur à la Grande Armée.’
The motors in the Champs Elysées and Place de la Concorde began to draw into the side and stop while their occupants got out to have a better view of the charming sight.
‘It must be for the cinema,’ they said to each other. ‘C’est trop joli.’
And indeed the little boy, with his blue trousers, yellow jersey, and mop of bright black hair on the white horse, outlined against a dappled sky, made a fascinating picture. Charles-Edouard laughed out loud as he looked. Then, as several whistling policemen arrived on the spot, he decided to allow Sigismond to deal alone with the situation as it developed. He hailed a taxi and went home. It was quite another half-hour before Sigi dashed into the house with a very great deal to tell.
Photographers, it seemed, had appeared; a man with a megaphone had told him to stay where he was. The crowd, led by Sigi, had begun to sing his favourite song, Les Voyez-vous, les hussars, les dragons, la garde. The firemen had arrived in a shrieking red car, had swarmed up more ladders to the horse, had carried him down and borne him home in triumph, shooting across red lights in the boulevard.
‘So these words have not remained unsaid after all, Papa, you
