‘My notion is that people, like things, have a right and a wrong way up, and there’s always a place to get hold of, if you want to have a good control and grasp of them. I know where the place is, and that’s my power! Driver, to the Tête Noire.’ At Paul Astier’s order the open carriage, in which the three tall hats belonging to Freydet, Védrine, and himself rose in funereal outline against the brightness of the afternoon landscape, drew up on the right-hand side of the bridge at St. Cloud, in front of the inn he had named. Every jolt of the hired conveyance over the paving of the square brought into sight an ominous long case of green baize projecting beyond the lowered hood of the carriage. Paul had chosen, as seconds for this meeting with D’Athis, first the Vicomte de Freydet, on account of his title and his ‘de,’ and with him the Count Adriani. But the Papal Embassy was afraid of adding another scandal to the recent affair of the Cardinal’s hat, and he had been obliged to find a substitute for Pepino in the sculptor, who would perhaps allow himself at the last minute to be described in the official statement as ‘Marquis.’ The matter, however, was not supposed to be serious, only a quarrel at the club over the card-table, where the Prince had taken a hand for a last game before leaving Paris. The affair could not be hushed up; it was specially impossible to cave in to a fighting man like Paul Astier, who had a great reputation in fencing rooms, and whose records were framed and hung in the shooting-gallery in the Avenue d’Antin.
While the carriage waited by the terrace of the restaurant and the waiters unobtrusively bestowed on it knowing glances, down a steep little path came rolling a short, fat man, with the white spats, white tie, silk hat, and captivating air of the doctor of a fashionable watering-place. He made signals from the distance with his sunshade, there’s Gomes,’ said Paul. Doctor Gomes, formerly on the resident staff of one of the Paris hospitals, had been ruined by play and an old attachment. Now he was ‘Uncle Gomes,’ and had an irregular practice; not a bad fellow, but one who would stick at nothing, and had made a specialty of affairs like the present. Fee, two guineas and breakfast. Just now he was spending his holiday with Cloclo at Ville d’Avray, and came puffing to the meeting place, carrying a little bag which held his instrument case, medicines, bandages, splints—enough to set up an ambulance.
‘Is it to be scratch or wound?’ he asked, as he took his seat in the carriage opposite Paul.
‘Scratch, of course, doctor, scratch, with swords of the Institute. The Académie Française against the Sciences Morales et Politiques.’
Gomès smiled as he steadied his bag between his knees.
‘I did not know, so I brought the big apparatus.’
‘Well, you must display it; it will impress the enemy,’ suggested Védrine, in his quiet way.
The doctor winked, a little put out by the two seconds, whose faces were unknown to the boulevards, and to whom Paul Astier, who treated him like a servant, did not even introduce him.
As the carriage started, the window of a room on the first floor opened, and a pair came and looked at them curiously. The girl was Marie Donval, of the Gymnase, whom the doctor recognised and named in a loud voice. The other was a deformed little creature, whose head was barely visible above the window-sill. Freydet, with much indignation, and Védrine, with some amusement, recognised Fage.
‘Are you surprised, M. de Freydet?’ said Paul. And hereupon he launched into a savage attack upon woman. Woman! A disordered child, with all a child’s perversity and wickedness, all its instinctive desire to cheat, to lie, to tease, all its cowardice. She was greedy, she was vain, she was inquisitive. Oh yes, she could serve you a hash of somebody else, but she had not an idea of her own; and in argument, why, she was as full of holes, twists, and slippery places as the pavement on a frosty night after a thaw. How was conversation possible with a woman? Why, there was nothing in her, neither kindness nor pity nor intellect—not leven common sense. For a fashionable bonnet or one of Spricht’s gowns she was capable of stealing, of any trick however dirty; for at bottom the only thing she cares for is dress. To know the strength of this passion a man must have gone, as Paul had, with the most elegant ladies of fashion to the rooms of the great man-milliner. They were hand-and-glove with the forewomen, asked them to breakfast at their country houses, knelt to old Spricht as if he were the Pope himself. The Marquise de Roca-Nera took her young daughters to him, and all but asked him to bless them!