She slipped out of the room without deeming it necessary to resume her overskirt. The feminine inhabitants of Rue St. Jacques were so extremely unconventional,—they not infrequently went down into the street for rolls and other articles attired in this charming negligée of the bedroom boudoir. And would, perhaps, have extended this unconventionality to the neighboring cafés, only the proprietaires had to draw a line somewhere, and had unanimously drawn it at hats and skirts, or full street dress.
Jean began to think himself entirely deserted, when Mlle. Fouchette burst rather than walked into the room conducting her next-door neighbor.
Jean saw before him a man scarcely older than himself, rather spare of figure and pale of face, in the garb of a provincial and with an air of the Jesuit enthusiast rather than the student of art. His long, dark hair was thick and bushy and worn trimmed straight around the neck after the fashion of Jeanne d'Arc's time. It completely hid his ears and fell in sprays over his temples. His face was the typical Christ of the old masters, the effect being heightened by the soft, fine, virgin beard and moustache of somewhat fairer color, and by the melancholy eyes, dark and luminous, with their curled and drooping lashes. These eyes gave rather a suggestion of sadness and inward suffering, but when animated seemed to glow with the smouldering fire of centuries.
"Pardon, Monsieur de Beauchamp," said Jean, upon being introduced to him, "but mademoiselle appears to have forgotten me for art."
"Ah! and as if there were no art in making a salad!" exclaimed the painter, as he shook hands with the other.
"Oh! là, là, là!" cried Mlle. Fouchette, wresting the dish from Jean's grasp; "there would be precious little art in this if you made it!" And she proceeded with the salad on her own account, using the two bowls that had but recently served them for soup.
Monsieur de Beauchamp and Jean discussed the student "manifestations" planned for the next day. The Dreyfusardes—a term by which all who differed from the military régime were known—had announced a public meeting, and a counter-demonstration had been called to not only prevent that meeting but to publicly chastise such as dared to take part in it.
No attempt was made to conceal these patriotic intentions from the police. The walls blazed with flaming revolutionary posters. The portrait of the Duc d'Orléans appeared over specious promises in case of Restoration. The Royal Claimant was said to be concealed in Paris. At any rate, his agents were busy. They were in league with the Bonapartists, the Socialists, the Anti-Semites, against the things that were, and called the combination Nationalists. They were really Opportunists. The republic overthrown, they agreed to fight out their rival claims to power between themselves.
The unfortunate Jew merely served them as a weapon. They were the real traitors to their country. With the most fulsome adulation and the Jew they courted the army and sought to lead it against the republic.
And the republic,—poor, weak, headless combination of inconsistencies,—through a tricky and vacillating Ministry and a bitter, factional Parliament, greatly encouraged the idea of any sort of a change.