“Uncle, this M. de Troisville is very pleasant,” she said when she came back again.
“Why, my girl, he has not said a word as yet,” returned the Abbé, laughing.
“But one can tell by his general appearance. Is he a bachelor?”
“I know nothing about it,” replied her uncle, his thoughts full of that afternoon’s discussion with the Abbé Couturier on Divine Grace. “M. de Troisville said in his letter that he wanted to buy a house here.—If he were married, he would not have come alone,” he added carelessly. It never entered his head that his niece could think of marriage for herself.
“Is he rich?”
“He is the younger son of a younger branch. His grandfather held a major’s commission, but this young man’s father made a foolish marriage.”
“Young man!” repeated his niece. “Why, he is quite five-and-forty, uncle, it seems to me.” She felt an uncontrollable desire to compare his age with hers.
“Yes,” said the Abbé. “But to a poor priest at seventy a man of forty seems young, Rose.”
By this time all Alençon knew that M. le Vicomte de Troisville had arrived at the Hôtel Cormon.
The visitor very soon rejoined his host and hostess, and began to admire the view of the Brillante, the garden, and the house.
“Monsieur l’Abbé,” he said, “to find such a place as this would be the height of my ambition.”
The old maid wished to read a declaration in the speech. She lowered her eyes.
“You must be very fond of it, mademoiselle,” continued the Vicomte.
“How could I help being fond of it? It has been in our family since 1574, when one of our ancestors, an Intendant of the Duchy of Alençon, bought the ground and built the house. It is laid on piles.”
Jacquelin having announced that dinner was ready, M. de Troisville offered his arm. The radiant spinster tried not to lean too heavily upon him; she was still afraid that he might, think her forward.
“Everything is quite in harmony here,” remarked the Vicomte as they sat down to table.
“Yes, the trees in our garden are full of birds that give us music for nothing. Nobody molests them; the nightingales sing there every night,” said Mlle. Cormon.
“I am speaking of the inside of the house,” remarked the Vicomte; he had not troubled himself to study his hostess particularly, and was quite unaware of her vacuity.—“Yes, everything contributes to the general effect; the tones of color, the furniture, the character of the house,” added he, addressing Mlle. Cormon.
“It costs a great deal, though,” replied that excellent spinster, “the rates are something enormous.” The word “contribute” had impressed itself on her mind.
“Ah! then are the rates high here?” asked the Vicomte, too full of his own ideas to notice the absurd non sequitur.
“I do not know,” said the Abbé. “My niece manages her own property and mine.”
“The rates are a mere trifle if people are well-to-do,” struck in Mlle. Cormon, anxious not to appear stingy. “As to the furniture, I leave things as they are. I shall never make any changes here; at least I shall not, unless I marry, and in that case everything in the house must be arranged to suit the master’s taste.”
“You are for great principles, mademoiselle,” smiled the Vicomte; “somebody will be a lucky man.”
“Nobody ever made me such a pretty speech before,” thought Mlle. Cormon.
The Vicomte complimented his hostess upon the appointments of the table and the housekeeping, admitting that he thought that the provinces were behind the times, and found himself in most delectable quarters.
“Delectable, good Lord! what does it mean?” thought she. “Where is the Chevalier de Valois to reply to him? Delectable? Is it made up of several words? There! courage; perhaps it is Russian, and if so I am not obliged to say anything.”—Then she added aloud, her tongue unloosed by an eloquence which almost every human creature can find in a great crisis—“We have the most brilliant society here, Monsieur le Vicomte. You will be able to judge for yourself, for it assembles in this very house; on some of our acquaintances we can always count; they will have heard of my return no doubt, and will be sure to come to see me. There is the Chevalier de Valois, a gentleman of the old court, a man of infinite wit and taste; then there is M. le Marquis d’Esgrignon and Mlle. Armande, his sister”—she bit her lip and changed her mind—“a—a remarkable woman in her way. She refused all offers of marriage so as to leave her fortune to her brother and his son.”
“Ah! yes; the d’Esgrignons, I remember them,” said the Vicomte.
“Alençon is very gay,” pursued mademoiselle, now that she had fairly started off. “There is so much going on; the Receiver-General gives dances; the Prefect is a very pleasant man; his lordship the Bishop occasionally honors us with a visit—”
“Come!” said the Vicomte, smiling as he spoke, “I have done well, it seems, to come creeping back like a hare3 to die in my form.”
“It is the same with me,” replied mademoiselle; “I am like a creeper,4 I must cling to something or die.”
The Vicomte took the saying thus twisted for a joke, and smiled.
“Ah!” thought his hostess, “that is all right, he understands me.”
The conversation was kept up upon generalities. Under pressure of a strong desire to please, the strange, mysterious, indefinable workings of consciousness brought all the Chevalier de Valois’ tricks of speech uppermost in Mlle. Cormon’s brain. It fell out, as it sometimes does
