“Sire, my brother!” he says;—“Sire let us go in!”
“Is the King of Rome better?”
“Yes.”
“And the Empress?”
“She is well.”
Only once has a gleam of light pierced these mists. It was in the year when, as Adèle said, he had had two Waterloos and had taken to his bed in consequence. One evening Adèle brought him a bowl of gruel. He stared like a child awakened from sleep when she carried in the lamp. She approached the bed, and he started up.
“Adèle!” he said, hoarsely, and pulling her face down, kissed her lips. For a moment she had hope, but with the next week came winter; and he commenced his annual preparations for the invasion of Russia.
THE WOOING OF MONSIEUR
CUERRIER.
IT had been one of those days that go astray in the year, and carry the genius of their own month into the alien ground of another. This one had mistaken the last month of spring for the last month of summer, and had lighted a May day with an August sun. The tender foliage of the trees threw almost transparent shadows, and the leaves seemed to burn with a green liquid fire in the windless air. Toward noon the damp fields commenced to exhale a moist haze that spread, gauze-like, across the woods. Growing things seemed to shrink from this heavy burden of sun, and if one could have forgotten that there were yet trilliums in the woods, he might have expected summer sounds on the summer air. After the sun had set the atmosphere hung dense, falling into darkness without a movement, and when night had come the sultry air was broken by flashes of pale light, that played fitfully and without direction. People sat on their door-steps for air, or paced the walks languidly. It was not a usual thing for Monsieur Cuerrier to go out after nightfall; his shop was a general rendezvous, and the news and the gossip of the neighborhood came to him without his search. But something had been troubling him all day, and at last, when his evening mail was closed, he put on his boots and went out. He sauntered down the street in his shirt sleeves, with his fingers in his vest pockets. His face did not lose its gravity until he had seated himself opposite his friend Alexis Girouard, and put a pipe between his teeth. Then he looked over the candle which stood between them, and something gleamed in his eye; he nursed his elbow and surveyed his friend. Alexis Girouard was a small man, with brown side-whiskers; his face was so round, and the movements of his person so rapid, that he looked like a squirrel whose cheeks are distended with nuts. By occupation he was a buyer of butter and eggs, and went about the country in a calash, driving his bargains. This shrewd fellow, whom no one could get the better of at trade, was ruled by his maiden sister with a rod of iron. He even enjoyed the friendship of Cuerrier by sufferance; their interviews were carried on almost clandestinely, with the figure of the terrible Diana always imminent.