But he started off again:
“It is the proper time! I don’t care a hang for the others. So much the worse that it happens to-day! It will serve as a lesson to every one.”
However, he lowered his voice, his strength failing him, he had dropped onto a chair, ready to burst into tears. An uncomfortable feeling had invaded the drawing-room. Madame Dambreville and Madame Juzeur had politely gone to the other end of the apartment, and pretended not to understand. Madame Josserand, greatly annoyed at an adventure, the scandal of which would cast a gloom over the wedding, had passed into the bed-room to cheer up Valérie. As for Berthe, who was studying her wreath before the looking-glass, she had not heard anything. Therefore, she questioned Hortense in a low voice. They whispered together; the latter indicated Théophile with a glance, and added some explanations, while pretending to arrange the fall of the veil.
“Ah!” simply said the bride, with a chaste and amused look, her eyes fixed on the husband, without the least sign of confusion in her halo of white flowers.
Clotilde softly asked her brother for particulars. Madame Josserand reappeared, exchanged a few words with her, and then returned to the adjoining room. It was an exchange of diplomatic notes. The husband accused Octave, that counter-jumper, whom he would chastise in church, if he dared to come there. He swore he had seen him the previous day with his wife on the steps of Saint-Roch; he had had a doubt before, but now he was sure of it—everything tallied, the height, the walk. Yes, madame invented luncheons with lady friends, or else she went inside Saint-Roch with Camille, through the same door as every one, as though to say her prayers; then leaving the child with the woman who let out the chairs, she would make off with her gentleman by the old way, a dirty passage, where no one would have gone to look for her. However, Valérie had smiled on hearing Octave’s name mentioned; never with that one, she pledged her oath to Madame Josserand, with nobody at all for the matter of that, she added, but less with him than with any one else; and, this time, with truth on her side, she, in her turn, talked of confounding her husband, by proving to him that the note was no more in Octave’s handwriting than that Octave was the gentleman of Saint-Roch. Madame Josserand listened to her, studying her with her experienced glance, and solely preoccupied with finding some means of helping her to deceive Théophile. And she gave her the very best advice.
“Leave all to me, don’t move in the matter. As he chooses, it shall he Monsieur Mouret, well! it shall be Monsieur Mouret. There is no harm in being seen on the steps of a church with Monsieur Mouret, is there? The letter alone is compromising. You will triumph when our young friend shows him a couple of lines of his own handwriting. Above all, say just the same as I say. You understand, I don’t intend to let him spoil such a day as this.”
When she returned into the room with Valérie, who was greatly affected, Théophile, on his side, was saying to his sister in a choking voice:
“I will do so for you, I promise not to disfigure her here, as you assure me it would scarcely be proper, on account of this wedding. But I cannot be answerable for what may take place at church. If the counter-jumper comes and beards me there, in the midst of my own family, I will exterminate them one after the other.”
Auguste, looking very correct in his black dress-coat, his left eye shrunk up, suffering from a headache which he had been dreading for three days past, arrived at this moment, accompanied by his father and his brother-in-law, both looking very solemn, to fetch his bride. There was a little jostling, for they had ended by being late.
At Saint-Roch the big double doors were opened wide. A red carpet covered the steps down to the pavement. It was raining; the May morning was very cold.