“To the devil with the rule!” cried the other in suppressed passion. “You know it for a blind—not as an excuse for licence. This folly, this ridiculous club! is it not designed but to enable us to indulge a passion of romance—under the very ægis of M. Lambertine, too, when he chooses to leave his tavern and his pipe?”
The girl in a swift transition of mood came from her seat and put up her hands caressingly to the young man’s shoulders.
“Basile, mon ami,” she murmured; “it is ridiculous, I know; but it is an excitement in this little dull world of ours. Thou sport’st with professions of opinion that are not the truth of thy soul. Thou knowest, as I know, dearest, that these wild theories spell disaster; that through all the waste of the ages honour is the pilot star that it is never but safe to steer by. Oh, do you not, Basile?”
“Surely,” said St Denys impatiently. “What have I said to disprove it? But honour will not dispel the fog through which these ships of state are driving to their doom. I who prophesy the crash—God of heaven, Théroigne! dost thou think my ambition surfeits on this scurvy junto of clodhoppers? It is play, my beautiful—just play to pass away the time.”
“And I too play, soul of my soul—but I will no more. This Englishman, if he dares again, he shall suffer. Thy honour shall be mine, as thou hast sworn to save me from myself—oh, Basile, darling, remember how thou hast sworn it!”
CHAPTER VII.
Mr Murk sat on a bank, solemnly preparing for an idyll.
“But I cannot subscribe to it in one respect,” thought he; “for, if I persist in being myself, I shall look upon all this as the most idiotic fooling.”
“Little Boppard,” said he, “what will society do now you have severed yourself from it?”
“Monsieur,” said the student angrily, “I am not to be laughed at.”