“That is it—put in that way it sounds easy enough,” said Fúcar, laughing too. “But—what of social ties—of our duties to the State, who cannot spare her most useful sons? But dear me, it strikes me—how careless I am! It is so late, and you have eaten nothing.”
“Oh! never mind—do not trouble yourself.”
“Never mind! What next? Even your sainted body must be fed.”
“On a little plain chocolate—nothing more. It is a missionary’s body and can endure much.”
“Leon,” cried Don Pedro to his friend, whom he spied passing across the next room, “I will order them to serve breakfast in the Hall of Hymen. Then you will be close to your wife: and you, Señor Paoletti, will not care for the bustle of the dining-room; all the party are breakfasting in there.... Bautista, Philidor!”
Hailing his Spanish servants and his French majordomo, the marquis made the whole household stir in the service of his guests. The multitude and zeal of the domestics resulted in a general clatter; hasty steps echoed over the inlaid floors, and on all sides the clinking of bottles and glasses was heard on metal trays, and the rattle of plates—welcome sounds to the hungry but courteous visitor, while the fragrance of stewed and fried meats pervaded the passages and rooms, as incense floats from chapel to chapel in a church.
The Hall of Hymen, so called because, in the middle of it, stood a group personifying marriage—two figures clasped in each other’s arms holding two torches of which the marble flames burnt as one—was quite close to the room which we may call María’s; but it did not adjoin it. A table was laid at once, and Leon and the priest sat down.
“Consommé,” said Leon pointing to a tureen full of rich soup. “It will be very good for you,” and he helped him to a large plateful.
“I have been thinking,” said Paoletti when, after a few spoonfuls, he was recovering from the exhaustion he had been suffering under for one hour past, “that in the whole course of my life—not a short one, nor free from strange conjuncture—I never have seen such a picture as we two compose at this moment.”
“What picture?”