“Your opinions, your sympathies, your whole attitude. I don’t approve of it—je le constate. You have withdrawn your confidence from the people; you have said things in this spot, where you stand now, that have given pain to my wife and me.”
“If we didn’t love you, we should say that you had betrayed us!” cried Madame Poupin, quickly, taking her husband’s idea.
“Oh, I shall never betray you,” said Hyacinth, smiling.
“You will never betray us—of course you think so. But you have no right to act for the people when you have ceased to believe in the people. Il faut être conséquent, nom de Dieu!” Poupin went on.
“You will give up all thoughts of acting for me—je ne permets pas ça!” exclaimed his wife.
“It is probably not of importance—only a little fraternal greeting,” Schinkel suggested, soothingly.
“We repudiate you, we deny you, we denounce you!” shouted Poupin, more and more excited.
“My poor friends, it is you who have broken down, not I,” said Hyacinth. “I am much obliged to you for your solicitude, but the inconsequence is yours. At all events, good-night.”
He turned away from them, and was leaving the room, when Madame Poupin threw herself upon him, as her husband had done a moment before, but in silence and with an extraordinary force of passion and distress. Being stout and powerful she quickly got the better of him, and pressed him to her ample bosom in a long, dumb embrace.
“I don’t know what you want me to do,” said Hyacinth, as soon as he could speak. “It’s for me to judge of my convictions.”