"Dear Denise," said the champion to the blushing maid, "the mourning for my poor brother has put off our marriage.... I do not very much regret the circumstance when I consider that in these days of turmoil I could not have devoted all my time to you. But believe Master Marcel; better days are approaching. Need I tell you that they are the subject of my ardent wishes, seeing that they will witness our union?"
"Dame Alison," cordially put in Marcel, "since marriage is the topic of the conversation, take pity on the amorous martyrdom of poor Rufin.... He is a good and loyal heart, despite some transports of youth that earned for him the nickname of 'Tankard-smasher.' I feel quite sure that the wholesome influence of a kind and honorable woman like yourself would make an excellent husband of him. It would be a double pleasure to me to see you and Rufin, Denise and Jocelyn, approach the altar the same day. What say you?"
"That needs thinking over," answered Alison, meditatively. "That needs much thinking over, Master Marcel. For the rest," she proceeded, with a blush and a sigh, "I say neither 'yes' nor 'no'.... I wish to consult Dame Marguerite."
"Rufin's prospects are good," rejoined the provost. "The woman who says not nay ever has a strong wish to say aye."
"Marcel would not be so cheerful and jovial did he actually believe himself and his partisans on the eve of grave dangers," thought Marguerite, now more and more reassured by the turn of gaiety her husband's words had taken. "I must have attached exaggerated importance to what I heard this evening. My husband is right. Even when his popularity is strongest, calumny pursues him. Maillart may be yielding simultaneously both to envy and the more generous feelings prompted by old friendship. He may believe in the loss of popularity by Marcel and enjoy the idea, and yet wish to save him. That wicked Petronille has merely thrown poison into an offer that, in itself, is honorable. If it were otherwise, Maillart would be the vilest of men, and that I am not ready to believe. Such a degree of perversity would exceed the bounds of possibility——"
"Denise," said the provost, kissing his niece on the forehead, "order a lamp to be taken into my cabinet. I have some documents to finish." Turning to his wife, whom he also kissed on the forehead: "I shall see you again before I leave," and taking Jocelyn by the arm: "Come, we have work to attend to."
Denise hastened to carry a lamp into Marcel's cabinet, where she left her uncle and her lover closeted together.
CHAPTER III.
DARKENING SHADOWS.
Once alone in his cabinet with Jocelyn, Marcel sank into profound pensiveness. The cheerful serenity that had pervaded his bearing during the conversation with his wife was now replaced by an expression of melancholic seriousness. For a few minutes he contemplated in silence his studious retreat, the witness of the meditations of his riper years. Finally, leaning over a large table that was strewn with parchments, he emitted a sigh and said to Jocelyn:
"How many nights have I not spent here, elaborating by the light of this little lamp the plans of reform that some day, hap now what hap may, will be the solid basis for the emancipation of our people, the evangelium of the rights of the citizen!... Here have been spent the happiest, the most beautiful days of my life!... What a pure joy did I not then taste!... Sustained by my ardent love for justice and right, and enlightened by the lessons of the past, I soared upward to the sublimest theories of freedom!... I then was ignorant of the deceptions, the evils, the delays, the struggles, the storms that the practice and application of truth inevitably engender!... I then saw truth in its radiant simplicity!... I did not then reckon with human passions!... But that matters not!... Truth is absolute.... Sooner or later it imposes itself upon humanity that ever is on the march, progresses and improves itself...."