(4)
But whatever truth there might be in Laurent's most unwelcome theory, L'Oiseleur's relapses into gloom and bitterness were separated by periods when someone resembling the old and charming Aymar was visible once more. After all, he was young, and Laurent, too, was young—younger still—and at times the youth of both of them surged up and over. Such a time was that day when, returning from his promenade on the terrace, Laurent announced to his companion that their captivity would henceforth be shared by a third individual—and then, at sight of his dismayed face, burst out laughing, and told him to wait until he had shown him the individual in question. He thereupon fetched a drinking-glass, turned his back, and after a moment deposited on the bed, in this transparent prison, an enormous grasshopper, as green as a leaf.
"Take it away!" said L'Oiseleur, recoiling. "It will get out . . . and I don't want it on me!"
Laurent sat himself down on the bed, too. "No, it won't. Besides, I'm going to tame it. You know that it is de rigueur for prisoners to tame mice and spiders, and this is better—of such a pleasing sylvan colour. I found him on the terrace. We will call him Vert-Vert; the parrot in the poem could not have been greener.—'Il était beau, brillant, leste et volage.' Look how he is feeling about with those enormous horns!"
"Poor devil!" said Aymar, studying the captive. "I should let it go again if I were you, de Courtomer."
"Very well," quoth Laurent and lifted the glass.
"Not here, you imbecile!" But Vert-Vert, after one second's reflection, had vanished into space. Yet, as his colour quickly betrayed him on the white quilt, he was recaptured without much difficulty at the foot of the bed, amid protests from its occupant, who did not, however, seem really annoyed—rather on the verge of being amused.
And indeed it was through Vert-Vert's agency that the next day was rendered remarkable; for it was the day on which L'Oiseleur actually laughed.
Laurent had been racking his brains for the most striking means of introducing Vert-Vert to M. Perrelet's notice, the great difficulty, however, being that the lively insect would not stay where he was put. All at once an idea came to him.
"I have it, Aymar!" he exclaimed . . . and pulled himself up short as the name slipped out. "—I beg your pardon!"
"Why?" asked L'Oiseleur, smiling. "I should like it. May I venture to do the same?"
"Yes, indeed!" said Laurent, colouring. And he added ingenuously, "I only wish my name were as beautiful as yours."
"Is it beautiful?" asked its possessor, raising his eyebrows. "I never thought of it. There have been so many in our family since the first, who was a Crusader.—But go on with your plan for introducing M. Perrelet to Vert-Vert."
Laurent was staring at him. That vivid impression of his own on his first entry to this room had justification then . . . He came back with a jump to his proposal. It needed some argument to get Aymar to agree to it, but when M. Perrelet came into the room half an hour later Laurent was chuckling to think how little one would have imagined that the grave young man who greeted him so demurely from his pillows was cherishing under the bedclothes, like any schoolboy, a large green grasshopper to let fly in his physician's face when he started to dress his wounds.
Not only, indeed, had L'Oiseleur entered into this childishness, but he had, as the event showed, planned an improvement upon it. For he withheld the insect enclosed in his hand from M. Perrelet altogether, and launched it instead, at an unexpected moment during the dressing of his shoulder, at his partner in guilt on the other side of the bed. Laurent started back with an exclamation as the ill-starred acrobat blundered against his chin and then fell into the little bowl of water which he held, and Aymar buried his face in the pillow, laughing like a boy.
A slow smile came over M. Perrelet's countenance as the situation dawned upon him. "Ah!" he said to himself in a tone of satisfaction. "But if there are any more of the Locustidae in your bed, Monsieur de la Rocheterie——"
"Do forgive me, sir!" pleaded Aymar, emerging from the pillow. "It was this follower of Buffon here. . . . Oh, it's gone again . . . it's on me!"
"Locusta viridissima, extremely agile," commented M. Perrelet. "For goodness' sake get the insect under control again, Monsieur de Courtomer, if I'm ever to finish this dressing!"