Then, noticing Cadaillac behind his Excellency, with a sharp twirl of her feet she advanced her forehead like that of a little girl for him to kiss.
“Howdy, uncle!—”
It was a relationship purely fantastic such as they adopt behind the scenes.
“What a make-believe madcap!” grunted the “right man to put one on the stage” behind his white moustache, but not in too loud a voice, because in all probability she was going to become one of his pensioners and a most influential pensioner.
Valmajour stood erect before the chimneypiece with a fatuous air, surrounded by a crowd of women and journalists. The foreign correspondent put his questions to him brutally, not at all in that hypocritical tone he used when interrogating ministers in special audiences; but, without being troubled in the least thereby, the peasant answered him with the stereotyped account his lips were used to: “It all come to me in the night while I listened me to the nightingawles singin’—”
He was interrupted by Mlle. Le Quesnoy, who offered him a glass of wine and a plate heaped up with good things especially for him.
“How do you do? You see this time I myself am bringing you the grand-boire.” She had made her speech for a purpose, but he answered her with a slight nod of the head, and, pointing to the chimneypiece, said “All right, all right, put it down there,” and went on with his story.
“So, what the birrud of the Lord could do with one hole....” Without being discouraged, Hortense waited to the end and then spoke to him about his father and his sister.
“She will be very much delighted, will she not?”
“O, yes; it has gone pretty well.”