Madame de Salgues was really slight and small, but enshrined in her own particular fauteuil, and arrayed with elaborate care in her antique brocades and laces, she looked dignified and even stately, while her manners exactly suited her surroundings, and seemed to lend them an added grace.
“Be seated, my dear Rose, and you too, Clémence,” she said to her nieces as they entered. “You will both wish to hear what Emile has just been telling me.”
Emile’s narrative did not flow quite so easily in the presence of his cousins. He sometimes had a shrewd suspicion that Madame de Talmont criticised and Clémence laughed at him; though this was hardly correct, because Clémence in those days had little heart to laugh. However, he resumed, after due exchange of greetings:—
“I was just telling my grandmother how we manned the guns at the Barrière du Trône, and sent a point-blank discharge into the midst of Count Pahlen’s hussars. Then they charged us in flank; and, outnumbered though we were, I think I may say we gave them enough to do. It was a glorious fight! But as for myself, I thought my last hour was come. I was knocked down in the mêlée, and flung into a ditch. A gigantic Cossack levelled his spear at my breast, and would have run me through with it; but another Russian turned it aside, and I heard him say, ‘Pas tuez le jeune Français.’”[51]
“May God’s blessing rest upon that Russian, whoever he was!” sighed Madame de Salgues.
“How is the Queen of Cities bearing her reverse of fortune?” asked Madame de Talmont, after suitable comments upon Emile’s perils and his gallantry.
“In no queenly fashion,” returned Emile, with an air of mortification, which, however, did not appear to spoil his enjoyment of his grandmother’s delicate preserves. “The truth is, I am ashamed of Paris. I am heartily glad I was born in the provinces. The Parisians have no faith, no constancy, no loyalty. Would you believe it?—nay, I suppose you have heard it already, for ill news travels fast—they have dragged down the Emperor’s statue from the top of the column in the Place Vendôme; they have loaded it with the vilest of insults, covered it with a sheet, put a rope round its neck—I know not what besides.”
“Perhaps the conquerors desired its removal,” suggested Madame de Talmont.
“Quite the reverse. The whole column would have shared the fate of the statue, but for a placard announcing that the Allies had taken it under their protection. The conduct of the mob has been unutterably base; and no whit better are the fine gentlemen of Paris, while the fine ladies are infinitely worse.”
“Take care what you say, my dear grandson,” spoke Madame de Salgues’ correct, quiet voice. “I could wish to see you more chivalrous.”