“Well, you see,” he said nonchalantly, “I did not know.”
Did not know what? In this vague phrase I perceived a painful significance. After a moment he explained:
“You see I did not know exactly the character of the ceremony.”
“It will be very simple.”
“Naturally.”
Naturally! I could have boxed his ears.
At the same time a host of thoughts, which had not occurred to me during the happy months of my seclusion, beset and assailed me. I breathed again the intoxication of certain successes, I recollected the splendid alliances which had been offered me, I evoked the memory of some mistress whose rouge and whose treachery I had passed over because she carried to perfection the arts of dress and of fencing with words. What a position I might have held in Paris, had I wished! Forgotten impressions, as glittering and as false as the jewelry of a bazaar, impressions which tarnished my youth but had been happily lost during my rides with a pure child in the Sleeping Woods, conquests which had temporarily faded from my memory, these Ducal brought back to me as if they were precious stones that he had recovered.
However, he had not yet seen Her. My radiant Raymonde would restore order in my heart.
We were to take luncheon at the lodge before going to the mayor’s office. The religious ceremony was to be celebrated on the following day. Raymonde appeared in her plain street dress, almost entirely devoid of trimming or ornament, and for the first time I noticed those faults in attire which cost youth so little.
“She is charming,” Ducal said to me in an undertone. “She has a little gown—”