“That is what should be said to children, that is what all parents, that is what all schoolmasters—”
He stopped short and struck his brow with his hand:
“My speech!—why, that is my speech!—I have it! splendid! the Château Bayard, a local legend—for fifteen days have I been looking for it—and here it is!”
“Why, it is pure Providence,” cried Mme. Bachellery, full of admiration, but thinking all the same that the breakfast was ending rather solemnly. “What a man! What a man!”
The little girl seemed also very much excited, but of this impression Roumestan took no heed; the orator was boiling in him, behind his brow and in his breast; so, completely absorbed with his idea:
“The fine thing,” said he, casting his eyes about him, “the fine thing would be to date the speech from Château Bayard—”
“O, if Mr. Lawyer should want a little corner in which to write—”
“Why, yes, only to jot down a few notes. You’ll excuse me, ladies, just for the time that will do to drink your coffee, and I will be back. It’s merely to be able to put the date to my speech without telling a lie.”
The servant placed him in a little room on the ground floor, most ancient in appearance, whose domelike, vaulted ceiling still carries traces of gilding; an ancient room which they pretend was Bayard’s oratory, just as they present to you as his bedroom the big hall to one side in which an enormous peasant’s bed, with a canopy and dark blue curtains, is set up.
It was very nice to write between those thick walls into which the heavy atmosphere of the day could not penetrate, behind that half-open shutter which threw a pencil of light across the page and allowed the perfumes from the little garden to enter. At first the orator’s pen was not quick enough to keep pace with the flow of his ideas; he poured out his phrases headlong, in a mass—well worn but eloquent phrases of a Provençal lawyer, filled with a hidden heat and the sputtering of sparks here and there, like the outflow of molten metal. Suddenly he stopped, his head emptied of words or rendered heavy by the fatigue of the journey and the weight of the breakfast. Then he marched up and down from the oratory to the bedroom, talking in a high voice, lashing himself, listening to his footsteps under the sonorous vaults as if they were those of some illustrious revenant, and then he set himself down again without the thoughts to put down a line. Everything swam about him, the walls brilliantly white-washed and that pencil of sunlight which seemed to hypnotize him. He heard the noise of plates and laughter in the garden, far, far away, and presently, with his nose on the paper, he had fallen fast asleep.