“One will be made for him,” M. Heurtevant declared in a moment of sudden illumination.
This remark, most forcibly uttered, raised a great outcry. The ladies manifested their indignation by various little ejaculations, and Mlle Tapinois, covering her face, protested against a man of God daring to scandalise a respectable and well-meaning company, and with children present. The abbé, blushing and quite out of countenance, being much more accustomed to reprimand others than to be reprimanded, lifted up his hands while Mlle Tapinois was haranguing, as a sign that he desired to explain. The opportunity was not immediately given, and he was forced to have patience until the excitement was calmed. He had simply meant to say that the continuity of the dynasty would be provided for, and that the royal race was not threatened with extinction. A legitimate successor would do as well as a child of a king. His explanations were received with ill grace, and Mlle Tapinois, who was seated near me, turned to M. de Hurtin, and put him through a course of questions, to certify that the prophet had found a very bad mouthpiece; thus taking her revenge on Balaam’s ass, which had not escaped her acute ear.
This incident which fastened itself on my memory though I did not very well understand it, as sometimes happens with memories, had cast a damper on these royalist meetings, when the approaching elections reanimated them.
“I do not believe in salvation by election,” father remarked, “still we must neglect nothing for the welfare of the country.”
A rumour was going round that the mayor’s chair would be contested, the actual occupant being unworthy. But who would lead the conflict? It must be a man of mettle, able and firm. Thenceforth I never passed the municipal building on my way to school without imagining it endowed with machicolations and cannons and bearing its part in a great confusion of historic sieges.
The bell at our gate was incessantly ringing, and it was not always some one for the doctor. Well dressed gentlemen who seemed to prefer to slip in at nightfall with the shadows, peasants, working men, were invading the house, and the same words were constantly repeated:
“Won’t you come forward, doctor?”
“Doctor, you must come forward.”
The old men of the suburbs would say more familiarly, “Get a move on, Monsieur Michel.”
I observed that the peasants and working men put more earnestness and conviction into their entreaties. The well-dressed gentlemen, better mannered, and more discreet, did not insist, and one of them, stout and dignified, carried his devotion so far as to propose himself.