The day fixed upon for the expedition to Paris was bright and sunny, with that delicious and undefinable quality of exhilaration in the air which is nature’s promise of summer hours to come. Such days often make sorrowing hearts yet more sorrowful, because the chords of hope and memory are intertwined, and no touch is light enough to stir the one without at the same time awakening the other. But the young and happy—those who are looking before them, not behind—find in the vague gladness of the world without the answer and the echo to voices equally glad and vague in the world within them. Earth, air, and sky alike seem to whisper, “Something good is coming. We know what it is, but we may not tell it yet.”
Truly something good was coming to two young hearts that day; nay, it had come already, only they themselves were not quite conscious of it. The sharp eyes of the Polytechnic scholar discerned some things which were perhaps not equally clear to those more immediately concerned. Emile felt very angry with Ivan for what he chose to consider his presumption, and he vowed inwardly that, if he could, he would spoil his plans. It seemed a kind of propitiatory sacrifice to his fallen idol Napoleon to disappoint and humiliate one of his conquerors—“ce coquin russe,” as he called him in his heart. But he allowed nothing of this to appear during the day; he was assiduous in performing his duty of cicerone to the party, and anxious that Ivan should miss no sight calculated to give him an exalted idea of the glories and resources of France—least of all the Louvre, then rich with the spoils of a vanquished continent.
He only permitted himself a slight touch of malice when Ivan met one of his friends, and was told by him that they could not see the Czar that day, as he had gone out to Malmaison. The evident disappointment of Clémence piqued him almost as much as it flattered Ivan.
“Never mind, ma cousine,” he said. “We will show you the camp of the Cossacks in the Champs-Elysées—that is something really worth seeing. It is true they are perfect savages, ugly, uncouth, and unclean; but they are sufficiently amusing for all that.”
Early in the day Ivan had observed the words, “Ici on dine à la Russe,” on the window of a fashionable restaurant in the Rue St. Honoré. He took Emile privately into counsel, saying, “I should like to give our friends a genuine Russian dinner;” and the lad, notwithstanding his private feelings, was glad to assist in a plan that promised a little amusement to himself. Accordingly, when the day was nearing its close, and the eyes and limbs of the little party were thoroughly tired, no one was very sorry to hear Emile say to Ivan,—
“This is the place where you wished me to order dinner, Monsieur Posharky. I have carried out all your directions to the best of my ability.”
But ere they could enter the glittering doors of the restaurant, their attention was attracted by a little scene which was passing on the crowded footpath of the fashionable street. A gentleman whom Emile would have called old, Ivan middle-aged, and Madame de Talmont in the prime of life, was bending in evident perplexity over a little girl, who was crying and stamping her small foot in a vehement passion.
“Ma petite, ma chère fillette,” he was expostulating, “be wise, I pray thee. Bethink thyself; all the world is gazing at us. Come, come, my child, dry thine eyes. I will buy thee a far handsomer brooch at the first jeweller’s shop I can find.”
“But it will not have in it the hair of dear mamma,” sobbed the child, a slight, black-eyed little girl of eleven or twelve.