"And then?"
"Then you will see Louis-Philippe, his large family and his umbrella, disencumbering the Tuileries of their presence, and at Rheims a child—a mother and child—crowned ... as you may see at this hour in there." He pointed with one hand to the façade of St. Sulpice, while with the other he tugged something from his pocket.
"Cousin, you do not serve your cause by blasphemy!" said the priest sharply.
Armand looked innocent. "But I thought the idea would appeal to you! It occurs to me, as an omen, every time I enter a church. Mea culpa! ... Take this for your cholera cases, Monsignor, in expiation. I was going to give it you in any case, but now it will atone, perhaps, for comparing Marie-Caroline to Our Lady. Au revoir—if the Fates permit." He thrust a roll of notes into his cousin's hand, lifted his hat, and turned down the Rue du Pot-de-Fer towards the Luxembourg.
(2)
It was not to admire the spring foliage of the trees in that now deserted garden that Armand walked slowly eastwards along one of its alleys. Yet he was engaged, rather strangely, in counting the trunks. When he reached the thirty-fifth, he stopped, looked about for the nearest seat, and sitting down upon it, pulled an opened letter from his pocket and re-read it.
It was from his wife at Plaisance, the family seat in Normandy, whither she and the child had been sent for safety. It informed him merely that she and Maurice were very well, and concluded by hoping that all at the Hôtel de la Roche-Guyon were in the same condition.
Armand made a slight grimace as he folded and refolded this epistle. Stretched out on the seat, his eyes raised to the new leaves, it occurred to him again to wish that his wife were a Catholic, and had a director, who might perhaps prescribe to her a more conciliatory line of conduct. Once, indeed, he had congratulated himself that in his domestic affairs, at least, no priest could intermeddle; now he thought regretfully of a certain friend of his acquaintance, a great deal more culpable than he, whose wife, in obedience (he suspected) to her confessor, was trying to win back her husband by a demeanour of unvarying amiability. Well, that was certainly not Horatia's way at present, nor was he sure that he would have liked it if it had been; but it would have made things more comfortable.
He had not set eyes on Laurence de Vigerie since the fatal night of the masked ball a month ago. As soon as she could be moved she had been hurried out of Paris under medical supervision, and she was now completing her convalescence at Spa, whence she wrote to him every few days. It had needed all her influence to keep him from following her thither, indeed he had only been restrained by her express prohibition, and the knowledge that if he left Paris at this juncture he cut himself off from communication with the cause for which they were both working. For, as Armand had hinted to his cousin, a crisis in Legitimist affairs was very near now. Since February the Duchesse de Berry had definitely resolved to come to France. The younger and more ardent spirits of her party, impatient of delay, continually wrote urging her to hasten. Now, with the cholera occupying the attention of the government, which had, moreover, lost Casimir-Périer from its head, with the Republicans about to rise, so it was rumoured, against Louis-Philippe, the favourable moment seemed at last arrived. And Armand, deprived of his regular channel of information through Madame de Vigerie, had come to this peaceful resort in quest of news.
He had not long to wait, for there presently approached along the deserted avenue, from the opposite direction, another gilded youth of about his own age, muffled almost up to his eyes in a cloak. He also appeared to be counting the trees, and when he arrived opposite Armand's seat came and sat down on it, without looking at its occupant. Then, without warning, he suddenly shot out the word "Marie."