While he ate, Malmus, proud of his guest, came and sat on the little red sofa which shook under his fits of asthma, and talked to him, while at a table near by a tall, thin woman took her place, the only relic of the old days left—a bony creature destitute of age known in the quarter as “everyone’s old girl.” Some kind-hearted student now married and settled far away had opened a credit for her at Malmus’s before he went. Confined for so many years to this one pasture, the poor creature knew nothing of what was going on in the outside world; she had not even heard of Numa’s triumph, and spoke to him pityingly as to one whom fortune had passed by, and in the same rank and category as herself.
“Well, poor old chum, how are things a-getting on? You know Pompon is married, and Laboulbène has passed his deputy at Caen.”
Roumestan hardly answered a word, hurried through his dinner and rushed away through the streets, noisy with many beershops and fruit stalls, feeling the bitterness of a life of failure and a general impression of bankruptcy.
Several years passed thus, during which his name became better known and more firmly established, but with little profit to himself, except for an occasional gift of a copy of some statuette in Barbédienne bronze. Then he was called upon to defend a manufacturer of Avignon, who had made seditious silk handkerchiefs. There was some sort of a deputation pictured on them standing about the Comte de Chambord, but very confusedly done in the printing, only with great imprudence he had allowed the initials “H. V.” (Henry Fifth) to be left, surrounded by a coat of arms.
Here was Numa’s chance for a good bit of comedy. He thundered against the stupidity that could see the slightest political allusion in that H. V.! Why, that meant Horace Vernet—there he was, presiding over a meeting of the French Institute!
This “tarasconade” had a great local success that did him more service than any advertisement won in Paris could; above all, it gained him the active approbation of his Aunt Portal. At first this was expressed by presents of olive oil and white melons, followed by a lot of other articles of food—figs, peppers, potted ducks from Aix, caviar from Martigues, jujubes, elderberry jam and St. John’s-bread, a lot of boyish goodies of which the old lady herself was very fond, but which her nephew threw into a cupboard to spoil.
Shortly after arrived a letter, written with a quill in a large handwriting, which displayed the brusque accents and absurd phrases customary with his aunt, and betrayed her puzzle-headed mind by its absolute freedom from punctuation and by the lively way in which she jumped from one subject to the other.
Still, Numa was able to discover the fact that the good woman desired to marry him off to the daughter of a Councillor in the Court of Appeals in Paris, one M. Le Quesnoy, whose wife, a Mlle. Soustelle from Aps, had gone to school with her at the Convent of la Calade—big fortune—the girl handsome, good morals, somewhat cool and haughty—but marriage would soon warm that up. And if the marriage took place, what would his old Aunt Portal give her Numa? One hundred thousand francs in good clinking tin—on the day of the wedding!
Under its provincialisms the letter contained a serious proposition, so serious indeed that the next day but one Numa received an invitation to dine with the Le Quesnoys. He accepted, though with some trepidation.
The Councillor, whom he had often seen at the Palais de Justice, was one of those men who had always impressed him most. Tall, slender, with a haughty face and a mortal paleness, sharp, searching eyes, a thin-lipped, tightly-closed mouth—the old magistrate, who originally came from Valenciennes, seemed like that town to be surrounded by an impregnable wall and fortified by Vauban. His cool Northern manner was most disconcerting to Numa. His high position, gained by his exhaustive study of the Penal Code, his wealth and his spotless life would have given him a yet higher position had it not been for the independence of his views and a morose withdrawal from the world and its gayeties ever since the death of his only son, a lad of twenty. All these circumstances passed before Numa’s mental vision as he mounted the broad stone steps with their carved hand-rail of the Le Quesnoy residence, one of the oldest houses on the Place Royale.