“No,” said I; “I have seen her—I saw her this evening at the Palace.”
“Well, I must present you,” said he, smiling good-day naturedly.
Before I could mutter my acknowledgment, the party had risen, and were taking leave of each other for the night.
“I shall see you soon again, Burke,” said De Beauvais, as he pressed my hand warmly; “and now, adieu!”
With that we parted; and I took my way back towards the Polytechnique, my mind full of strange incidents of this the most eventful night in my quiet and monotonous existence.
CHAPTER XXVI. THE TWO VISITS.
Amid all the stirring duties of the next day, amid all the excitement of a new position, my mind recurred continually to the events of the previous twenty-four hours: now dwelling on the soiree at the Palace,—the unaccustomed splendor, the rank, the beauty I had witnessed; now on that eventful moment I spent behind the screen; then on my strange rencontre with my antagonist, and that still stranger supper that followed it.
It was not, indeed, without certain misgivings, which I could neither account for nor dismiss from my mind, that I reflected on the character and conversation of my new associates. The tone of levity in which they dared to speak of him whose name was to me something bordering on idolatry,—the liberty with which they ventured to canvass his measures and his opinions, even to ridiculing them,—were so many puzzles to my mind; and I half reproached myself for having tamely listened to language which now, as I thought over it, seemed to demand my notice. Totally ignorant of all political intrigue,—unconscious that any party did or could exist in France save that of the First Consul himself,—I could find no solution to the enigma, and at last began to think that I had been exaggerating to myself the words I had heard, and permitting my ignorance to weigh with me, where with more knowledge I should have seen nothing reprehensible. And if the spirit in which they discussed the acts of Bonaparte differed from what I had been accustomed to, might it not rather proceed from my own want of acquaintance with the usages of society, than any deficiency in attachment on their sides? The préfet was, of course, as an officer of the Government, no mean judge of what became him; the abbé, too, as a man of education and in holy orders, was equally unlikely to express unbecoming opinions; the Russian scarcely spoke at all; and as for De Beauvais, his careless and headlong impetuosity made me feel easy on his score. And so I reasoned myself into the conviction that it was only the ordinary bearing and everyday habit of society to speak thus openly of one who in the narrower limits of our little world was deemed something to worship.
Shall I own what then I could scarcely have confessed to myself, that the few words De Beauvais spoke at parting,—the avowed cousinship with her they called “La Rose de Provence,”—did much to induce this conviction on my mind? while his promise to present me was a pledge I could not possibly believe consistent with any but right loyal thoughts and honest doctrines. Still, I would have given anything for one friend to advise with,—one faithful counsellor to aid me. But again was I alone in the world; and save the short and not over-flattering reception of my colonel, I had neither seen nor spoken to one of my new corps.