As to that department there was but one voice in all Paris, even among his worst enemies—Numa was the man for the work. Now at last there would be a jury for art, a lyric theatre, an official art! But the Minister cut these dithyrambics off and remarked in a gay and familiar tone that the new Cabinet was composed almost exclusively of Southerners. Out of eight members Provence, Bordeaux, Périgord and Languedoc had supplied six; and then, growing excited: “Aha, the South is climbing, the South is climbing! Paris is ours. We have everything. It rests with you, gentlemen, to profit by it. For the second time the Latins have conquered Gaul!”
He looked indeed like a Latin of the conquest, his head like a medallion with broad flat surfaces on the cheeks, with his dark complexion and unceremonious ways, his carelessness, so out of place in this Parisian drawing-room. In the midst of the cheers and laughter greeting his last speech Numa, always a good actor, knowing well how to leave as soon as he had shot his bolt, suddenly quitted the fireplace and signing to Méjean to follow him passed from the room by one of the smaller doors, leaving Rosalie to make his excuses for him. He was to dine at Versailles with the Marshal; he had hardly the time to dress and sign a few papers.
“Come and help me dress,” said he to a servant who was laying the table with three plates, for Roumestan, Madame and Bompard, around that basket of flowers which Rosalie had fresh at every meal. He felt a thrill of delight that he was not to dine there; the tumult of enthusiasm that he had left behind him in the drawing-room excited in him the desire for more gayety and more brilliant company. Besides, a Southerner is never a domestic man. The Northern nations alone have invented to meet their wretched climate the word “home,” that intimate family circle to which the Provençal and the Italian prefer the gardens of cafés and the noise and excitement of the streets.
Between the dining-room and the office was a small reception room, usually full of people at this hour, anxiously watching the clock and looking abstractedly at the illustrated papers, but quite preoccupied by their legal woes. Méjean had sent them all away to-day, for he did not think Numa could attend to them. One, however, had refused to go: a big fellow in ready-made garments and awkward as a corporal in citizen’s dress.
“Ah, God be with ye, Monsieur Roumestan; how are things? I have been hoping so long that you would come!”
The accent, the swarthy face, that jaunty air—Numa had seen them somewhere before, but where?
“You have forgotten me?” said the stranger. “Valmajour, the taborist.”
“Oh yes, yes, of course.”
He was about to pass on, but Valmajour planted himself before him and informed him that he had arrived the day before yesterday. “I couldn’t get here before, because when one moves a whole family, it takes a little time to get installed.”
“A whole family?” said Numa with bulging eyes.