第97章

She took him to a room above-stairs, and introduced him to a bed on which a magnified bolster, in yellow calico, figured as a counterpane.Newman lay down, and, in spite of his counterpane, slept for three or four hours.

When he awoke, the morning was advanced and the sun was filling his window, and he heard, outside of it, the clucking of hens.

While he was dressing there came to his door a messenger from M.de Grosjoyaux and his companion proposing that he should breakfast with them.Presently he went down-stairs to the little stone-paved dining-room, where the maid-servant, who had taken off her night-cap, was serving the repast.

M.de Grosjoyaux was there, surprisingly fresh for a gentleman who had been playing sick-nurse half the night, rubbing his hands and watching the breakfast table attentively.

Newman renewed acquaintance with him, and learned that Valentin was still sleeping; the surgeon, who had had a fairly tranquil night, was at present sitting with him.Before M.de Grosjoyaux's associate reappeared, Newman learned that his name was M.Ledoux, and that Bellegarde's acquaintance with him dated from the days when they served together in the Pontifical Zouaves.

M.Ledoux was the nephew of a distinguished Ultramontane bishop.

At last the bishop's nephew came in with a toilet in which an ingenious attempt at harmony with the peculiar situation was visible, and with a gravity tempered by a decent deference to the best breakfast that the Croix Helvetique had ever set forth.

Valentin's servant, who was allowed only in scanty measure the honor of watching with his master, had been lending a light Parisian hand in the kitchen.The two Frenchmen did their best to prove that if circumstances might overshadow, they could not really obscure, the national talent for conversation, and M.Ledoux delivered a neat little eulogy on poor Bellegarde, whom he pronounced the most charming Englishman he had ever known.

"Do you call him an Englishman?" Newman asked.

M.Ledoux smiled a moment and then made an epigram."C'est plus qu'un Anglais--c'est un Anglomane!" Newman said soberly that he had never noticed it; and M.de Grosjoyaux remarked that it was really too soon to deliver a funeral oration upon poor Bellegarde.

"Evidently," said M.Ledoux."But I couldn't help observing this morning to Mr.Newman that when a man has taken such excellent measures for his salvation as our dear friend did last evening, it seems almost a pity he should put it in peril again by returning to the world."M.Ledoux was a great Catholic, and Newman thought him a queer mixture.

His countenance, by daylight, had a sort of amiably saturnine cast;he had a very large thin nose, and looked like a Spanish picture.

He appeared to think dueling a very perfect arrangement, provided, if one should get hit, one could promptly see the priest.He seemed to take a great satisfaction in Valentin's interview with the cure, and yet his conversation did not at all indicate a sanctimonious habit of mind.

M.Ledoux had evidently a high sense of the becoming, and was prepared to be urbane and tasteful on all points.He was always furnished with a smile (which pushed his mustache up under his nose)and an explanation.Savoir-vivre--knowing how to live--was his specialty, in which he included knowing how to die; but, as Newman reflected, with a good deal of dumb irritation, he seemed disposed to delegate to others the application of his learning on this latter point.

M.de Grosjoyaux was of quite another complexion, and appeared to regard his friend's theological unction as the sign of an inaccessibly superior mind.He was evidently doing his utmost, with a kind of jovial tenderness, to make life agreeable to Valentin to the last, and help him as little as possible to miss the Boulevard des Italiens;but what chiefly occupied his mind was the mystery of a bungling brewer's son making so neat a shot.He himself could snuff a candle, etc., and yet he confessed that he could not have done better than this.

He hastened to add that on the present occasion he would have made a point of not doing so well.It was not an occasion for that sort of murderous work, que diable! He would have picked out some quiet fleshy spot and just tapped it with a harmless ball.M.Stanislas Kapp had been deplorably heavy-handed; but really, when the world had come to that pass that one granted a meeting to a brewer's son!...

This was M.de Grosjoyaux's nearest approach to a generalization.

He kept looking through the window, over the shoulder of M.Ledoux, at a slender tree which stood at the end of a lane, opposite to the inn, and seemed to be measuring its distance from his extended arm and secretly wishing that, since the subject had been introduced, propriety did not forbid a little speculative pistol-practice.

Newman was in no humor to enjoy good company.He could neither eat nor talk; his soul was sore with grief and anger, and the weight of his double sorrow was intolerable.

He sat with his eyes fixed upon his plate, counting the minutes, wishing at one moment that Valentin would see him and leave him free to go in quest of Madame de Cintre and his lost happiness, and mentally calling himself a vile brute the next, for the impatient egotism of the wish.