Before we retired to the drawing-room for coffee, I saw that the “pension” was a Royalist establishment, and wondered how it happened that I should have been selected by the host to make one of his guests. Yet unquestionably there seemed no reserve towards me; on the contrary, each evinced a tone of frankness and cordiality which made me perfectly at ease, and well satisfied at the fortune which led me to the Rue Mi-Carême.
The little parties of dominoes and piquet scattered through the salon; some formed groups to converse; the ladies resumed their embroidery; and all the occupations of indoor life were assumed with a readiness that betokened habit, and gave to the “pension” the comfortable air of a home.
Thus passed the first evening. The next morning the party assembled at an early hour to breakfast; after which the gentlemen went out, and did not appear until dinnertime,—day succeeding day in unvarying but to me not unpleasing monotony. I rarely wandered from the large wilderness of a garden near the house, and saw weeks pass over without a thought ever occurring to me that life must not thus be suffered to ebb.
CHAPTER XXIX. MY NAMESAKE
About a month after I came to live in the “pension,” I was sitting one evening at the window, watching, with the interest an idle man will ever attach to slight things,—the budding leaves of an early spring,—when I heard a step approach my chair, and on turning my head perceived Madame de Langeac. She carried her taboret in her hand, and came slowly towards me.
“I am come to steal some of your sunshine, Monsieur Burke,” said the old lady, smiling good-naturedly, as I rose to present a chair, “but not to drive you away, if you will be generous enough to keep me company.”
I stammered out some commonplace civility in reply, and was silent, for my thoughts were bent upon my future, and I was ill disposed to interruption.
“You are fond of flowers, I have remarked,” continued she, as if perceiving my preoccupation, and willing to relieve it by taking the burden of the conversation. “And it is a taste I love to witness; it seems to me like the evidence of a homely habit. It is only in childhood we learn this love; we may cultivate it in after life as we will.”
“My mother was passionately fond of them,” said I, calling up a long-buried memory of home and kindred.