In the room he entered, which was full of officers, the enquiry seemed to be the sole topic of conversation, and the only point on which there appeared to be general agreement was that those who had not attended it that afternoon would be there next morning. Some stared at Laurent, recognizing him, and he felt that it was not a bad move to have put in an appearance, just to show that one had a clear conscience. His own friends were fortunately bien pensants, one of them enthusiastically so, and the other said that he thought La Rocheterie must be innocent, or he would never have had the courage to bring all this upon himself. With them, too, surmises were not wanting as to the "cousin" and her relations with L'Oiseleur, but Laurent purposely avoided throwing any light upon the subject.
Presently, lo, through the clouds of tobacco-smoke a face appeared for a moment and vanished again. Laurent made one of his swift sallies.
"Monsieur Perrelet, come in, come in! Are you looking for me—how charming of you! Come and have a glass of wine with me! I have some friends here; you can tell us the latest news from Arbelles."
M. Perrelet, chuckling, protesting and pleased, suffered the young man to drag him in and make presentations.
"Well, yes, perhaps one glass of cognac," he said. "I left him in bed," he announced behind his hand to Laurent, "in fact, I gave him a sleeping-draught (though he was not aware of it). . . . There is something I want to ask you presently. . . . Oh, thank you, Monsieur, you are too kind!"
So there the good doctor sat, smoking a cheroot, and very happy in the consciousness that he was "seeing life"—in the Royalist camp this time; at least that was how Laurent read his amused and contented and observant expression, and he was probably not far wrong. But half of Laurent himself, though he continued to chat, was gauging with a rather too acute sensitiveness the current of feeling in the room about the one thing which mattered to him. After the tension of the afternoon the wine he had taken, though without affecting his head in the ordinary sense, made him conscious of a desire to get up and say something, publicly, on Aymar's behalf. But his better sense warned him against it. However, he ended by engaging in something a great deal more sensational than oratory.
For at a table close by had now been sitting for a little while, with a friend, the very officer whose behaviour had displeased him in the audience at the Hôtel de Ville. Laurent could not help hearing their conversation. The two amused themselves for some time by half-whispered witticisms about "la belle cousine," and though Laurent's brow grew darker and darker his good sense again warned him not to bring this topic into more prominence by taking notice of it.
But suddenly he heard, so clearly spoken that others must have heard it, too:
"Pretty brazen, to base your main defence on an invented conversation with two men of whom one is dead and the other cannot be found!"
The other man assented, and Laurent, angry as he was, realized what a specious appearance of truth there was in this criticism.