People turned to look as they passed, puzzled by the strange couple: this officer of the Légion onneur, an old gentleman with a white beard, and a girl who looked like a school teacher, walking arm in arm tenderly. Some attempted a guess; some instinctively smiled, moved by vague sympathetic ideas. Sometimes students who knew the master by sight purposely stared at him to win a glance for themselves, or even, moved by respect, saluted him.
M. Raindal perceived this homage only confusedly. He was now concentrating all his attention on questioning Thérèse to ascertain her exact opinion of his opening lecture. Was she satisfied? Had it gone well? It was not too long? And the peroration, what had she thought that? Had he done right in dismissing those loungers and snobs who had dared to invade his lecture hall, his own quiet little chapel?
“Oh, yes!” Thérèse replied. “Although I might say you were a little too severe and scornful.”
“Never enough so!... It may be good for the Sorbonne to have all those fine ladies and their tame cats.... But as for us, we want none but workers, true apprentices....”
Then he digressed into a diffuse commentary on the duties, the dignity, and the aim of the Collège de France. Science! Le Collège de France! There lay his faith, his church, and he had no other! Thérèse knew by heart the order and the verses of these fiery litanies, and let him proceed without interruption.
“Never mind, child,” he concluded, out of breath. “They have had their warning. I think we shall not see them again.... Moreover, this affluence has its reasons.... It is another miracle of our Cleopatra.”
“Oh, our Cleopatra!” Thérèse protested.
“Yes, yes, ours. I maintain the word....”
Following the natural bent which leads one to talk of oneself, he recalled the phases of his disconcerting triumph: fame that had come in a night, the whole press, the reviews, and the salons working together to make him famous; five thousand copies sold in three weeks; articles every night, every morning ... everywhere—those papers which fell into line later proving more ardent than the first ones, thus seeking in the fervor of their adhesion an excuse for the shame of their delay; letters, interviews, requests for articles, portraits and autographs. Success, in one word,—that imperial investiture, with its long, endless offerings, delirious praetorians, and even the intolerant enthusiasm that forces the jealous to wait, which Paris sometimes gives to its elect.
And to whom did M. Raindal owe it all? Who had suggested to him the subject of this book three years ago? Who had thought of a Life of Cleopatra, written from the national Egyptian point of view, and deriving its inspiration from indigenous documents and the popular sentiments of the period? And then who had helped him to the very end, faithfully seconded him in the heavy task? Who had classified the material, copied the papyri, transcribed the inscriptions, and read the proofs over and over, one by one, with the exception of the Latin notes? Who had....