I like his daughter, the pastoress, very much. Madame Vedel is like Lamartine’s Elvire—an elderly Elvire. Her conversation is not without charm. She has a frequent habit of leaving her sentences unfinished, which gives her reflections a kind of poetic vagueness. She reaches the infinite by way of the indeterminate and the indefinite. She expects from a future life all that is lacking to her in this one; this enables her to enlarge her hopes boundlessly. The very narrowness of her taking-off ground adds strength to her impetus. Seeing Vedel so rarely enables her to imagine that she loves him. The worthy man is incessantly on the go, in request on all sides, taken up by a hundred and one different ploys—sermons, congresses, visits to the sick, visits to the poor. He can only shake your hand in passing, but it is with all the greater cordiality.
“Too busy to talk today.”
“Never mind; we shall meet again in Heaven,” say I; but he hasn’t had time to hear me.
“Not a moment to himself,” sighs Madame Vedel. “If you only knew the things he gets put on his shoulders now that. … As people know that he never refuses anything, everyone. … When he comes home at night, he is sometimes so tired that I hardly dare speak to him for fear of. … He gives so much of himself to others that there’s nothing left for his own family.”
And while she was speaking I remembered some of Vedel’s homecomings at the time I was staying at the pension. I sometimes saw him take his head between his hands and pant aloud for a little respite. But even then I used to think he feared a respite even more than he longed for it, and that nothing more painful could have been accorded him than a little time in which to reflect.
“You’ll take a cup of tea, won’t you?” asked Madame Vedel, as a little maid brought in a loaded tray.
“There’s not enough sugar, Ma’am.”
“Haven’t I said that you must tell Miss Rachel about it? Quick! … Have you let the young gentlemen know tea’s ready?”
“Mr. Bernard and Mr. Boris have gone out.”
“Oh! And Mr. Armand? … Make haste.”
Then, without waiting for the maid to leave the room:
“The poor girl has just arrived from Strasburg. She has no. … She has to be told everything. … Well! What are you waiting for now?”
The maidservant turned round like a serpent whose tail has been trodden on:
“The tutor’s downstairs; he wanted to come up. He says he won’t go till he’s been paid.”
Madame Vedel’s features assumed an air of tragic boredom:
“How many times must I repeat that I have nothing to do with settling accounts. Tell him to go to Miss Rachel. Go along. … Not a moment’s peace! What can Rachel be thinking of?”
“Aren’t we going to wait tea for her?”
“She never takes tea. … Oh! the beginning of term is a troublesome time for us. The tutors who apply ask exorbitant fees, or when their fees are possible, they themselves aren’t. Papa was not at all pleased with the last; he was a great deal too weak with him; and now he comes threatening. You heard what the maid said. All these people think of nothing but money. … As if there were nothing more important than that in the world. … In the meantime we don’t know how to replace him. Prosper always thinks one has nothing to do but to pray to God for everything to go right. …”
The maid came back with the sugar.
“Have you told Mr. Armand?”
“Yes, Ma’am; he’s coming directly.”
“And Sarah?” I asked.
“She won’t be back for another two days. She’s staying with friends in England; with the parents of the girl you saw here before the holidays. They have been very kind, and I’m glad that Sarah was able to. … And Laura. I thought she was looking much better. The stay in Switzerland coming after the South has done her a great deal of good, and it was very kind of you to persuade her to it. It’s only poor Armand who hasn’t left Paris all the holidays.”
“And Rachel?”
“Yes, of course; Rachel too. She had a great many invitations, but she preferred to stop in Paris. And then Grandfather needed her. Besides one doesn’t always do what one wants in this life—as I am obliged to repeat to the children now and then. One must think of other people. Do you suppose I shouldn’t have enjoyed going away for a change to Switzerland too? And Prosper? When he travels, do you suppose it’s for his pleasure? … Armand, you know I don’t like you to come in here without a collar on,” she added, as she saw her son enter the room.
“My dear mother, you religiously taught me to attach no importance to my personal appearance,” said he, offering me his hand; “and with eminent apropos too, as the wash doesn’t come home till Tuesday and all the rest of my collars are in rags.”
I remembered what Olivier had told me about his schoolfellow, and it seemed to me that he was right and that an expression of profound anxiety lay hidden beneath the spiteful irony he affected. Armand’s face had fined down; his nose was pinched; it curved hawk-like over lips which had grown thin and colourless. He went on:
“Have you informed your noble visitor that we have made several additions to our usual company of performers and engaged a few sensational stars for the opening of the winter season? The son of a distinguished senator and the Vicomte de Passavant, brother to the illustrious writer—without counting two recruits whom you know already, but who
