“This lady looks after several others in our court, and she reads to my sister.”
“Oh, well, you are patient, you English.”
“We shall never do anything without that,” said M. Paul, with undisturbed good-humour.
“You are perfectly right; you can’t say that too often. It will be a tremendous job, and only the strong will prevail,” his host murmured, a little wearily, turning his eyes to Madame Poupin, who approached slowly, holding the tisane in a rather full bowl, and tasting it again and yet again as she came.
Hyacinth had been watching his fellow-visitor with deepening interest; a fact of which M. Paul apparently became aware, for he said, presently, giving a little nod in the direction of the bed, “He says we ought to know each other. I’m sure I have nothing against it. I like to know folk, when they’re worth it!”
Hyacinth was too pleased with this even to take it up; it seemed to him, for a moment, that he couldn’t touch it gracefully enough. But he said, with sufficient eagerness, “Will you tell me all about your plot?”
“Oh, it’s no plot. I don’t think I care much for plots.” And with his mild, steady, light-blue English eye, M. Paul certainly had not much the appearance of a conspirator.
“Isn’t it a new era?” asked Hyacinth, rather disappointed.
“Well, I don’t know; it’s just a little movement.”
“Ah bien, voilà du propre; between us we have thrown him into a fever!” cried Madame Poupin, who had put down her bowl on a table near her husband’s bed and was bending over him, with her hand on his forehead. Eustache was flushed, he had closed his eyes, and it was evident there had been more than enough conversation. Madame Poupin announced as much, with the addition that if the young men wished to make acquaintance they must do it outside; the invalid must be perfectly quiet. They accordingly withdrew, with apologies and promises to return for further news on the morrow, and two minutes afterward Hyacinth found himself standing face to face with his new friend on the pavement in front of M. Poupin’s residence, under a street-lamp which struggled ineffectually with the brown winter dusk.