“No,” said the stammering Mayor, “I am seeing Randon home.”
“But he lives on the Chaloux road!”
The councillor explained matters.
“I am going as far as the Favres grocery near here with an order. It is for my wife.”
“I will go with you. I am just taking the air before supper.”
Neither the Mayor nor Randon dared to confess their plan. They returned to Cognin very humbly on either side of the schoolmaster, who held forth at length and announced the coming golden age of brotherhood.
* * * * *
“I shall be back in the evening,” Madame Guibert had said to her daughter, as she got into Trélaz’s carriage. She was going to Chambéry on family business. With the help of Étienne and François, who had been lucky in their enterprises at Tonkin, and with Marcel’s aid during the Sahara Expedition they had been able to keep Le Maupas.
At sunset Paule came out for the first time to lean on the balustrade. She listened for the sound of the approaching carriage coming up the slope, but she listened in the quiet evening air in vain. As the frost was very sharp she ran to get a shawl, wrapped herself in it, and waited.
The snow-covered land grew rosy in the evening light. A kind of virginal purity was over it. The vine-branches and the hedges were covered with a fine lacework of hoarfrost, which shone in the dying fires of day. The bare woods had no more secrets, and the branches with their thousand twigs stood out in the clear air like blades of grass.