He stopped suddenly, remembering that he had used these same words to Méjean that same morning.
“Well, I can’t help it—it’s done now.”
He jerked his shoulder and sank into a corner of the coupé.
“After all, Hortense is free to choose for herself; she can decide. I shall have saved this boy anyhow from spending his time in bad company.” And in fact Roumestan really thought that this motive alone had made him act as he did.
CHAPTER IX.
AN EVENING PARTY AT THE MINISTRY.
There was an unusual look to the Faubourg St. Germain that evening. Quiet little streets that were sleeping peacefully at an early hour were awakened by the jolting of omnibuses turned from their usual course; while other streets, where usually the uninterrupted stream and roar of great Parisian arteries prevail, were like a river-bed from which the water has been drained. Silent, empty, apparently enlarged, the entrance was guarded by the outline of a mounted policeman or by the sombre shadows across the asphalt of a line of civic guards, with hoods drawn up over their caps and hands muffled in their long sleeves, saying by a gesture to carriages as they approached: “No one can pass.”
“Is it a fire?” asked a frightened man, putting his head out of the carriage window.
“No, sir; it is the evening party of the Public Instruction.”
The sentry passed on and the coachman drove off, swearing at being obliged to go so far out of his way on that left bank of the Seine, where the little streets planned without system are still somewhat confusing, after the fashion of old Paris.
At a distance, sure enough, the brilliant lights from the two fronts of the Ministry, the bonfires lighted in the middle of the streets because of the cold, the gleam from lines of lanterns on the carriages converging to one spot, threw a halo round the whole quarter like the reflection of a great conflagration, made more brilliant by the limpid blueness of the sky and the frosty dryness of the air. On approaching the house, however, one was reassured by the perfect arrangements of the party; for the conflagration was but the glare of the even white light rising to the eaves of the nearer houses, that rendered visible, as distinctly as by day, the names in gold upon the different public buildings—“Mayory of the Seventh District,” “Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs,” fading off in Bengal flames and fairylike illumination among the branches of some big and leafless trees.