But if she made them happy by her gaiety, what matter! The tears dried, and she flashed a malicious look at the young Seigneur, as though to say: “You had your chance, and you made nothing of it, and these simple gentlemen have done the gracious thing.”
Perhaps it was a liberal interpretation of his creed which prompted the Cure to add with a quaint smile:
“‘Thou art not far from the Kingdom,’ my daughter.”
The avocat, who had no vanity, hastened to add to his former remarks, as if he had been guilty of an oversight:
“Dear madame, you have flattered my poor gleanings in history; I am happy to tell you that there is here another and a better pilot in that sea. It is Monsieur Valmond,” he added, his voice chirruping in his pleasure. “For Napoleon—”
“Ah, Napoleon—yes, Napoleon?” she said, turning to Valmond, with a look half of interest, half of incredulity.
“—For Napoleon is, through him, a revelation,” the avocat went on. “He fills in the vague spaces, clears up mysteries of incident, and gives, instead, mystery of character.”
“Indeed,” she added, still incredulous, but interested in this bizarre figure who had so worked upon her old friend, interested because she had a keen scent for mystery, and instinctively felt it here before her. Like De la Riviere, she perceived a strange combination of the gentleman and—something else; but, unlike him, she saw also a light in the face and eyes that might be genius, poetry, adventure. For the incongruities, what did they matter to her? She wished to probe life, to live it, to race the whole gamut of inquiry, experiences, follies, loves, and sacrifices, to squeeze the orange dry, and then to die while yet young, having gone the full compass, the needle pointing home. She was as broad as sumptuous in her nature; so what did a gaucherie matter? or a dash of the Oriental in a citizen of the Occident?
“Then we must set the centuries right, and so on—if you will come to see me when I am settled at the Manor,” she added, with soft raillery, to Valmond. He bowed, expressed his pleasure a little oracularly, and was about to say something else, but she turned deftly to De la Riviere, with a sweetness which made up for her previous irony to him, and said:
“You, my kind Seigneur, will come to breakfast with me one day? My husband will be here soon. When you see our flag flying, you will find the table always laid for four.”