"Come," she said, "kiss him, or, at any rate, let him kiss you! Before me, it is quite permissible; I stand to you as a mother, and I think the poor lad has fully earned it. There! Now go your way, Monsieur de la Logerie, and we will go ours; but remember that the care of my own interests will not prevent me from looking after yours."
"When may I see her again?" said Michel, timidly.
"It will be dangerous, I know that," replied Petit-Pierre; "but after all, they say there's a God who protects both lovers and drunkards, and if so, I'll rely on him. You shall pay one visit at least to the rue du Château, No. 3. I intend, if I can, to return your Mary to you."
So saying, Petit-Pierre gave Michel a hand, which he kissed respectfully; then Petit-Pierre and Mary turned in the direction of the upper town, while Michel took his way back toward the pont Rousseau.
[XXVIII.]
SHOWING HOW THERE MAY BE FISHERMEN AND FISHERMKN.
Maître Courtin had been very unhappy in mind during the whole evening Madame de la Logerie had compelled him to pass with her. By gluing his ear to the door he had heard every word the baroness had said to her son, and he knew, therefore, of the scheme of the schooner.
Michel's departure would, of course, upset all his projects for the discovery of Petit-Pierre; consequently, he was little desirous of the honor the baroness did him in taking him home with her. He was, in fact, most anxious to get back to the farmhouse. He hoped, by evoking the image of Mary, to prevent, or at least delay, the flight of his young master; for if the latter departed he lost, of course, the thread by which he expected to penetrate the labyrinth in which Petit-Pierre was hidden.
Unluckily for him, as soon as Madame de la Logerie reached the château she struck another vein of ideas. In taking Courtin from the farmhouse her only idea had been to hide her son's departure and protect him from the farmer's curiosity; but on reaching the château she found the house, occupied for the last few weeks by a band of soldiers, in such deplorable disorder that she forgot, in presence of a devastation which assumed to her eyes the proportions of a catastrophe, all her natural distrust of Courtin, and she kept him with her as the recipient and echo of her lamentations. Her despair, expressed with the energy of conviction, prevented Courtin from leaving her, without some decided pretext, and therefore delayed his return to the farmhouse.
He was too shrewd not to suspect that the baroness had brought him to keep him away from her son; but her despair was so genuine at the sight of her broken china, shattered mirrors, greasy carpets, and her salon transformed into a guard-room and adorned with primitive but most expressive designs, that he began to doubt his first suspicion, and to think that if his young master had really not been cautioned against him it would be an easy matter to join him before he could board the vessel.