"Carte blanche, old fellow. And let old Hemerlingue burst with rage."
Thereupon the manager detailed his plans, the festivities to be divided by days, as at Vaux when Fouquet entertained Louis XIV.; one day a play, another day Provençal fêtes, farandoles, bull-fights, local music; the third day—And, in his mania for management, he was already outlining programmes, posters, while Bois-l'Héry, with both hands in his pockets, lying back in his chair, slept peacefully with his cigar stuck in the corner of his sneering mouth, and the Marquis de Monpavon, always on parade, drew up his breastplate every moment, to keep himself awake.
De Géry had left them early. He had gone to take refuge with the old lady—who had known him, and his brothers, too, when they were children—in the modest parlor in the wing, with the white curtains and light wall-paper covered with figures, where the Nabob's mother tried to revive her past as an artisan, with the aid of some relics saved from the wreck.
Paul talked softly, sitting opposite the handsome old woman with the severe and regular features, the white hair piled on top of her head like the flax on her distaff, who sat erect upon her chair, her flat bust wrapped in a little green shawl;—never in her life had she rested her back against the back of a chair or sat in an armchair. He called her Françoise and she called him Monsieur Paul. They were old friends. And what do you suppose they were talking about? Of her grandchildren, pardi! of Bernard's three boys whom she did not know, whom she would have loved so dearly to know.
"Ah! Monsieur Paul, if you knew how I long for them! I should have been so happy if he had brought me my three little ones instead of all these fine gentlemen. Just think, I have never seen them, except in those pictures yonder. Their mother frightens me a bit, she's a great lady out-and-out, a Demoiselle Afchin. But the children, I'm sure they're not little coxcombs, but would be very fond of their old granny. It would seem to me as if it was their father a little boy again, and I'd give them what I didn't give the father—for, you see, Monsieur Paul, parents aren't always just. They have favorites. But God is just. You ought to see how He deals with the faces that you paint and fix up the best, to the injury of the others. And the favoritism of the old people often does harm to the young."
She sighed as she glanced in the direction of the great alcove, from which, through the high lambrequins and falling draperies, issued at intervals a long, shuddering breath like the moan of a sleeping child who has been whipped and has cried bitterly.
A heavy step on the stairs, an unmelodious but gentle voice, saying in a low tone: "It's I—don't move,"—and Jansoulet appeared. As everybody had gone to bed at the château, he, knowing his mother's habits and that hers was always the last light to be extinguished in the house, had come to see her, to talk with her a little, to exchange the real greeting of the heart which they had been unable to exchange in the presence of others. "Oh! stay, my dear Paul; we don't mind you." And, becoming a child once more in his mother's presence, he threw his whole long body on the floor at her feet, with cajoling words and gestures really touching to behold. She was very happy too to have him by her side, but she was a little embarrassed none the less, looking upon him as an all-powerful, strange being, exalting him in her artless innocence to the level of an Olympian encompassed by thunder-bolts and lightning-flashes, possessing the gift of omnipotence. She talked to him, inquired if he was still satisfied with his friends, with the condition of his affairs, but did not dare to ask the question she had asked de Géry: "Why didn't you bring me my little grandsons?"—But he broached the subject himself.
"They're at boarding-school, mamma; as soon as the vacation comes, I'll send them to you with Bompain. You remember him, don't you, Bompain Jean-Baptiste? And you shall keep them two whole months. They'll come to you to have you tell them fine stories, they'll go to sleep with their heads on your apron, like this—"
And he himself, placing his curly head, heavy as lead, on the old woman's knees, recalling the happy evenings of his childhood when he went to sleep that way if he were allowed to do so, if his older brother's head did not take up all the room—he enjoyed, for the first time since his return to France, a few moments of blissful repose, outside of his tumultuous artificial life, pressed against that old motherly heart which he could hear beating regularly, like the pendulum of the century-old clock standing in a corner of the room, in the profound silence of the night, which one can feel in the country, hovering over the boundless expanse. Suddenly the same long sigh, as of a child who has fallen asleep sobbing, was repeated at the farther end of the room.
"Is that—?"