Madame Dulaurens was trying to catch a glimpse of her daughter, who was separated from her by a candelabrum. Alice’s orchids were drooping under the warm rain of her tears. In the general confusion no one had seen her cry.
“How did he die?” questioned one of the ladies.
“At the head of his men—after the victory—with a bullet in his forehead. I quote the telegram that my man read.”
“Did he receive the last sacrament?” asked Mademoiselle de Songeon shaking her grey head.
The ever-correct M. Dulaurens summed up the affair. “He is a great loss to his country.”
“Yes,” added his wife, in a noble impulse of eloquence. “We will honor his glorious memory. We will get up a memorial service whose magnificence shall astonish all Chambéry. It is the duty of our class to show France how genuine merit must be recognised and rewarded, at a time when mediocrity has taken possession of the country, when envious equality drags it down to the lowest level.” She had read this last sentence that very morning in a leading article of the Gaulois.
Alice, surprised to hear all this, thought in her sorrow, “Why then, did she refuse to let me give myself to him?” And Isabelle was silent, thinking of Jean Berlier, whose fate was still unknown.
Madame Orlandi, forgetting Pistache for a minute, noticed how abstracted her daughter was. She looked at her with loving admiration and praised herself for the depth of her maternal affection. In an outburst in which the thought of self did not swallow up all pity she expressed her concern for Madame Guibert.
“Does his mother know?” she asked. And she stopped confusedly, as though she felt herself guilty of a scandal. All eyes turned to Clément Dulaurens. The young man answered in a free and easy way, the bad taste of which was due rather to his youth than to any lack of feeling.
“She must know all by now. As I was coming home I met her driving back to Le Maupas in her old cart. She was passing under a gas lamp; I recognised her quite well, I had to go slowly on account of my damaged car.”