Chirac hesitated. “My faith! Yes!” he said at length. “But it becomes you. If I did not know that you have little love for compliments, I—”
“But I adore compliments!” she exclaimed. “What made you think that?”
“Well, then,” he youthfully burst out, “you are more ravishing than ever.”
She gave herself up deliciously to his admiration.
After a silence, he said: “Ah! if you knew how disquieted I was about you, away there...! I should not know how to tell you. Veritably disquieted, you comprehend! What could I do? Tell me a little about your illness.”
She recounted details.
As the fiacre entered the Rue Royale, they noticed a crowd of people in front of the Madeleine shouting and cheering.
The cabman turned towards them. “It appears there has been a victory!” he said.
“A victory! If only it was true!” murmured Chirac, cynically.
In the Rue Royale people were running frantically to and fro, laughing and gesticulating in glee. The customers in the cafes stood on their chairs, and even on tables, to watch, and occasionally to join in, the sudden fever. The fiacre was slowed to a walking pace. Flags and carpets began to show from the upper storeys of houses. The crowd grew thicker and more febrile. “Victory! Victory!” rang hoarsely, shrilly, and hoarsely again in the air.