The young friend, on whom all eyes were immediately turned, shrank back, looking terrified. But Mathieu lost no time in continuing his reading. He was approaching a favourite passage, a purple patch directed against "crowned tyrants," "perfidious Albion," and "those vipers, the émigrés," and so he unleashed fully the voice which was so much at variance with his physique. A man yawned, another banged approval—and the small boy, overcome by emotion or fatigue, hid his face in his hands and burst into tears. His companion tried to quiet him, but the child drew away from him, and the man, evidently annoyed, and muttering, "He is overtired; excuse him, my friends!" picked him up, and carried him out of the room.
Mathieu was not unaccustomed to exits during his performances, but this retreat was rather flattering than otherwise, since it could only be attributed to his power of moving the heart. He paused a moment, smirked, and proceeded.
(2)
Half an hour later, however, he had succeeded in clearing the room in earnest. Yet did he not himself depart, having regard to the possible advent of other guests, but remained awhile, running his hand through his dank hair, and casting up his eyes to the ceiling whenever the patron, scowling, looked in at the door.
His patience was duly rewarded when, at about five minutes to eight, the host ushered in a tall man in a cloak, evidently a traveller. The newcomer ordered a meal, and went to sit at a table in a far corner. Mathieu took stock of him, and finally arose and approached him.
"You are travelling, citizen?"
La Vireville looked carefully at the speaker. He himself desired rather to ask than to answer questions, but the poet appeared harmless. Moreover, having traced Anne-Hilarion and his companion as far as Abbeville, and having already drawn blank at two inns in that town, he was glad of the chance of information. So he said quietly, "Yes, citizen. And you?"
"Ah no; I inhabit Abbeville. You will not have heard of me, citizen, but I am not quite unknown, even in Paris. My name is Pourcelles—Mathieu Pourcelles. I write a little—verse. I wonder if I might presume? . . . You have the look of a lover of letters" (the phrase with which Mathieu was wont to approach any victim not absolutely bucolic). "I may?" And out came the manuscript of the Ode.
La Vireville endured it, eating his omelette, and thinking fast. He was beginning to feel a little baffled. Anne and his escort had certainly come to Abbeville; the point was, had they already left it? It appeared, from the cautious inquiries which he had made along the road from Calais, that the travellers were but little ahead of him—a fact which, in spite of the nearly incredible haste which he had made, seemed almost too good to be true, and which, considering their twenty-four hours' start, he found it difficult to account for. It was risky to ask direct questions, yet he would shortly be driven to that course. But he had not reckoned for the vanity of an author.
"I now come," said the gifted poet, simpering, "to a passage which, as recently as three-quarters of an hour ago, inspired tears in a member of my little audience. It is true that he was very young, but who shall say whether the pure heart of childhood——"