Nevertheless, she was back, and Armand was conscious of a distinct lightening of his spirits.
(2)
It was, no doubt, a dark and shameful blot on the family blazon that the heir of the house of La Roche-Guyon should be an amateur botanist of some distinction. Not the tragic life-in-death of his wife, nor the unmothered state of his only son was to be compared, in the eyes of the Dowager Duchess, with the fact that Emmanuel, Marquis de la Roche-Guyon was delivered over to a taste which she considered suitable enough in an apothecary but unspeakably derogatory for a man of family. The Marquis, however, never betrayed much discomposure at the sarcasms of his venerable grand-parent. Forty-one years of a not very happy life had taught him calm, and, kindly and unostentatiously courteous though he was to everyone, he went his own way. Despite his name and connections, he had done nothing in the world of politics or diplomacy, and never would; he was merely an ineffective, reserved, tolerant and melancholy gentleman who desired to lead the life of a recluse and did not always succeed in doing it.
It was in accordance with his habits that when he took his walks abroad such exercises were likely sooner or later to lead him past the bookstalls on the quays of the Seine—for he was something of a bibliophile too. On a certain afternoon in April therefore, about ten days after Armand's meeting with the Vicomtesse de Vigerie, he was passing slowly along by the lidded boxes on the Quai Voltaire, when he observed a fashionably dressed and elegant young man turning over the old books at a stall a little further on, and recognised, to his no small surprise, his own brother. Armand was humming a tune between his teeth, and seemed gay above the ordinary; the lamentable old proprietor of the box watched him with respect.
"This is a new avocation for you, mon cher," observed the Marquis, tapping him on the shoulder.
"Just the person I wanted," retorted the young man, glancing up. "Find me that, and I will never call you herbalist or bookworm again." He put into the hand of his elder a slip of paper inscribed in a feminine writing. Emmanuel looked at it and gave it back.
"You are not in the least likely to find that here. It is rather rare."
"Dame! so it seems. I have ruined a clean pair of gloves over the search already. I must go to a bookseller's, I suppose."
"Well, I was going to say that if you want it for yourself or for your wife I have a copy, and would lend it you with pleasure."
"A thousand thanks," replied Armand, turning away from the box. "But I want it for someone else, so that would not do. I must try down the Rue des Saints-Pères. Are you coming my way? No; au revoir then."