"It is the land! It is France!" she whispered.
It was light now, men and women were moving about the steerage deck, he could no longer hold her in his arms; but, standing there at the ship's side, her hand was tightly clasped in his.
There were glad words on Jean's lips:
"It is France, Marie-Louise—and home."
— XIV —
THE STATUE OF DREAMS
Four months had passed. The spring had come. France mourned for Jean Laparde. Old Bidelot shook his grizzled head, and pushed away, with a curiously reproachful motion of his hand, the mass of sketches and designs that lay upon the desk before him. If France grieved for the loss of one of her most brilliant sons, the great critic of France grieved besides for the loss of a personal friend that he had loved. Of these competitive designs that he had been appointed to judge for the statue with which France was to commemorate Jean Laparde—none would do! Not one! Not one, but was so far from the genius of Jean's own work that there seemed something mocking and incongruous in the thought that it should aspire to perpetuate and typify the work of the master-sculptor who was gone! Not one would do—and meanwhile they besieged him, those who had submitted their designs, to cast Jean's mantle upon them! They came at all hours; they waited interminably on his door-step for him to return; they buttonholed him on the streets and in the cafés to urge their claims and to explain the allegory of their conceptions, lest some subtle beauty in their work might have escaped his eye! One would not think they would do that—eh? That it was not dignified? No? Well—there was the mantle of Jean Laparde!
"Mon Dieu!" sighed Bidelot heavily—and suddenly raised his head at a timid knocking upon the door. Here was another of them then, no doubt! He had been wrong to let his servant take the afternoon, and leave his apartment so unguarded that his very door was at their mercy! "Well, come!" he called out, querulously—but the next instant he had risen, and was smiling, as he extended his hand. It was Father Anton. "Ah, Father Anton!" he cried. "This is a pleasure! This is a pleasure indeed! I do not often see you these days! As a matter of fact—let me see—not since Monsieur Bliss went away to America, and the evenings at his house were at an end."
"That is so," agreed Father Anton. "But then, I have been very busy; and besides, for a little while, I was in Bernay-sur-Mer."