“What! Don’t you remember Colonel Georges, Ali Pasha’s friend? We traveled this road together, once upon a time, with the Comte de Sérizy, who preserved his incognito.”
One of the commonest follies of persons who have come down in the world is insisting on recognizing people, and on being recognized.
“You are very much changed,” said the old land-agent, now worth two millions of francs.
“Everything changes,” said Georges. “Look at the Silver Lion inn, and at Pierrotin’s coach, and see if they are the same as they were fourteen years since.”
“Pierrotin is now owner of all the coaches that serve the Oise Valley, and has very good vehicles,” said Monsieur Léger. “He is a citizen now of Beaumont, and keeps an inn there where his coaches put up; he has a wife and daughter who know their business—”
An old man of about seventy came out of the inn and joined the group of travelers who were waiting to be told to get in.
“Come along, Papa Reybert!” said Léger. “We have no one to wait for now but your great man.”
“Here he is,” said the land-steward of Presles, turning to Joseph Bridau.
Neither Oscar nor Georges would have recognized the famous painter, for his face was the strangely worn countenance now so well known, and his manner was marked by the confidence born of success. His black overcoat displayed the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. His dress, which was careful in all points, showed that he was on his way to some country fête.
At this moment a clerk with a paper in his hand bustled out of an office constructed at one end of the old kitchen of the Silver Lion, and stood in front of the still unoccupied coupé.
“Monsieur and Madame de Canalis, three places!” he called out, then coming to the intérieur, he said, “Monsieur Bellejambe, two places; Monsieur Reybert, three; monsieur—your name?” added he to Georges.
“Georges Marest,” replied the fallen hero in an undertone.
The clerk then went to the rotonde (the omnibus at the back of the old French diligence), round which stood a little crowd of nurses, country folks, and small shopkeepers, taking leave of each other. After packing the six travelers, the clerk called the names of four youths who clambered up on to the seat on the imperiale, and then said, “Right behind!” as the signal for starting.
Pierrotin took his place by the driver, a young man in a blouse, who in his turn said, “Get’ up,” to his horses.
The coach, set in motion by four horses purchased at Roye, was pulled up the hill of the Faubourg Saint-Denis at a gentle trot, but having once gained the level above Saint-Laurent, it spun along like a mail-coach as far as Saint-Denis in forty minutes. They did not stop at the inn famous for cheesecakes, but turned off to the left of Saint-Denis, down the valley of Montmorency.
It was here, as they turned, that Georges broke the silence which had been kept so far by the travelers who were studying each other.
“We keep rather better time than we did fifteen years ago,” said he, taking out a silver watch. “Heh! Père Léger?”
“People are so condescending as to address me as Monsieur Léger,” retorted the millionaire.
“Why, this is our blusterer of my first journey to Presles,” exclaimed Joseph Bridau. “Well, and have you been fighting new campaigns in Asia, Africa, and America?” asked the great painter.
“By Jupiter! I helped in the Revolution of July, and that was enough, for it ruined me.”
“Oho! you helped in the Revolution of July, did you?” said Bridau. “I am not surprised, for I never could believe what I was told, that it made itself.”
“How strangely meetings come about,” said Monsieur Léger, turning to Reybert. “Here, Papa Reybert, you see the notary’s clerk to whom you owe indirectly your place as steward of the estates of Sérizy.”
“But we miss Mistigris, now so famous as Léon de Lora,” said Joseph Bridau, “and the little fellow who was such a fool as to tell the Count all about his skin complaints—which he has cured at last—and his wife, from whom he has parted to die in peace.”
“Monsieur le Comte is missing too,” said Reybert.
“Oh!” said Bridau sadly, “I am afraid that the last expedition he will ever make will be to l’Isle-Adam, to be present at my wedding.”
“He still drives out in the park,” remarked old Reybert.
“Does his wife come often to see him?” asked Léger.
“Once a month,” replied Reybert. “She still prefers Paris; she arranged the marriage of her favorite niece, Mademoiselle du Rouvre, to a very rich young Pole, Count Laginski, in September last—”
“And who will inherit Monsieur de Sérizy’s property?” asked Madame Clapart.
“His wife.—She will bury him,” replied Georges. “The Countess is still handsome for a woman of fifty-four, still very elegant, and at a distance quite illusory—”
“Elusive, you mean? She will always elude you,” Léger put in, wishing, perhaps, to turn the tables on the man who had mystified him.
“I respect her,” said Georges in reply.—“But, by the way, what became of that steward who was so abruptly dismissed in those days?”
“Moreau?” said Léger. “He is deputy now for Seine-et-Oise.”
“Oh, the famous centre Moreau (of l’Oise)?” said Georges.
“Yes,” replied Léger. “Monsieur Moreau (of l’Oise). He helped rather more than you in the Revolution of July, and he has lately bought the splendid estate of Pointel, between Presles and Beaumont.”
“What, close to the place he managed, and so near his old master! That is in very bad taste,” cried Georges.
“Do not talk so loud,” said Monsieur de Reybert, “for Madame Moreau and her daughter, the Baronne de Canalis, and her son-in-law, the late minister, are in the coupé.”
“What fortune did he give her that the great orator would marry his daughter?”
“Well, somewhere about two millions,” said Léger.
“He had a pretty taste in millions,” said Georges, smiling, and in an undertone, “He began feathering his nest at Presles—”
“Say no more about Monsieur Moreau,” exclaimed Oscar. “It seems
