“Well, as for me, I tell you that when I was only a poor little lieutenant on the staff and went out on my Sunday leave, dressed in my best, with my five and twenty years and my new shoulder-straps, I used to get many long, fond glances from the women whom I met, those glances like a whip that make your whole body tingle from head to foot, looks that cannot be got by a big epaulette of my age. And so, now, when I want to feel the warmth and sincerity in looks of that sort from lovely eyes, silent declarations in the open street, do you know what I do? I take one of my aides-de-camp, young, cocky, with a fine figure and—get them by promenading by his side, S—d—m—s—!”
Roumestan did not speak again until they reached Paris. As in the morning, he was again plunged in gloom, but furious also against those fools of women who could be so blind as to go crazy over boobies and fops.
What was there particularly fascinating about De Lappara he would like to know? Throughout the discussion he had sat fingering his beard with a fatuous air, looking conceited in his perfect clothes and low-cut shirt collar, and not saying a word. He would have liked to slap him. Probably it was that air he took when he sang Mireille with little Bachellery—who was probably his mistress. The idea was horrible to him—but still he would have liked to know the truth about it and convince himself.
As soon as they were alone and driving to the Ministry in the coupé he said to Lappara suddenly, brutally, without looking at him:
“Have you known these women long?”
“Which women, your Excellency?”
“The Bachellerys, of course; O, come!”
He had been thinking of them so constantly himself that he felt as if every one else must be doing the same thing. Lappara laughed.
O, yes—he had known them a long time; they were countrywomen of his. The Bachellery family and the Folies Bordelaises were part of the jolliest souvenirs of his youth. He had been desperately enough in love with the mother when he was a lad to make all his school-boy buttons split.
“And to-day in love with the daughter?” asked Roumestan playfully, rubbing the misty window with his glove to look out into the dark rainy street.