As he went away with the water running off him, he passed a tall figure bent double, coming up from the swimming bath, which gave him a shivering nod from under a huge gutta-percha cap covering the head and half the face. The man’s lean pallor and stiff stooping walk made Paul take him for one of the poor invalids who attend the establishment regularly, and whose apparition, silent as night-birds in the fencing-room where they come to be weighed, contrasts so strangely with the healthy laughter and superabundant vigour of the rest of the company. But the contemptuous curve of the large nose and the weary lines round the mouth vaguely recalled some face he knew in society. In his dressing-room he asked the man who was shampooing him, ‘Who was that, Raymond, who bowed to me just now?’
‘Why, that’s the Prince d’Athis, sir,’ replied Raymond, with a plebeian’s satisfaction in uttering the word ‘prince.’ ‘He has been taking douches for some time past, and generally comes in the morning. But he is later to-day, on account of a burial, so he told Joseph.’
The door of Paul’s dressing-room was partly open during this dialogue, and in the room on the opposite side of the passage was visible La vaux. As he pulled on and buckled his long clerical hose, he said, ‘I say, Paul, did you see Sammy coming to freshen himself up a bit?’
‘Freshen himself up?’ said Paul. ‘What for?’
‘He’s going to be married in a fortnight, you know.’
‘Oh! And when does he go to his Embassy?’
‘Why, now, at once. The Princess has started. They are to be married out there.’
Paul had a horrid presentiment. ‘The Princess?’ he asked. ‘Whom is he going to marry?’