Guida smiled. She guessed whom Carterette meant. "Has Monsieur Detricand more buttons now?" she asked with a little whimsical lift of the eyebrows.
"Ah bidemme, yes, and gold too, all over him—like that!" She made a quick sweeping gesture which would seem to make Detricand a very spangle of buttons. "Come, what do you think—he's a general now.
"A general!" Instantly Guida thought of Philip and a kind of envy shot into her heart that this idler Detricand should mount so high in a few months—a man whose past had held nothing to warrant such success. "A general—where?" she asked.
"In the Vendee army, fighting for the new King of France—you know the rebels cut off the last King's head."
At another time Guida's heart would have throbbed with elation, for the romance of that Vendee union of aristocrat and peasant fired her imagination; but she only said in the tongue of the people: "Ma fuifre, yes, I know!"
Carterette was delighted to thus dole out her news, and get due reward of astonishment. "And he's another name," she added. "At least it's not another, he always had it, but he didn't call himself by it. Pardi, he's more than the Chevalier; he's the Comte Detricand de Tournay—ah, then, believe me if you choose, there it is!"
She pointed to the signature of the letter, and with a gush of eloquence explained how it all was about Detricand the vaurien and Detricand the Comte de Tournay.
"Good riddance to Monsieur Savary dit Detricand, and good welcome to the Comte de Tournay," answered Guida, trying hard to humour Carterette, that she should sooner hear the news yet withheld. "And what follows after?"
Carterette was half sorry that her great moment had come. She wished she could have linked out the suspense longer. But she let herself be comforted by the anticipated effect of her "wonderfuls."
"I'll tell you what comes after—ah, but see then what a news I have for you! You know that Monsieur d'Avranche—well, what do you think has come to him?"