“All that there is of the most secular,” replied she, inexorably. “And the recording angels will, no doubt, enter it to my account—and not yours, monsieur le curé”.
So Mademoiselle Brun played to the wounded all through the long afternoons until her fingers grew stiff. And the doctors said that she saved more than one fretting life. She was not a great musician, but she had a soothing, old-fashioned touch. She only played such ancient airs as she could remember. And the more she played the more she remembered. It seemed to come back to her—each day a little more. Which was odd, for the music was, as she had promised the curé, secular enough, and could not, therefore, have been inspired by her sacred surroundings within the altar rails. Though, after all, it may have been that those who recorded this sacrilege against Mademoiselle Brun, not only made a cross-entry on the credit side, but helped her memory to recall that forgotten music.
Thus the days slipped by, and little news filtered through to the quiet Ardennes village. The tide of war had rolled on. The Germans, it was said, were already halfway to Paris. And from Paris itself the tidings were well-nigh incredible. One thing alone was certain; the Bonaparte dynasty was at an end and the mighty schemes of an ambitious woman had crumbled like ashes within her hands. All the plotting of the Regency had fallen to pieces with the fall of the greatest schemer of them all, whom the Paris government fatuously attempted to hoodwink. Napoleon the Third was indeed a clever man, since his own wife never knew how clever he was. So France was now a howling Republic—a Republic being a community wherein every man is not only equal to, but better than his neighbour, and may therefore shout his loudest.
No great battles followed Sedan. France had but one army left, and that was shut up in Metz, under the command of another of the Paris plotters who was a bad general and not even a good conspirator.
Poor France had again fallen into bad hands. It seemed the end of all things. And yet for Mademoiselle Brun, who loved France as well as any, all these troubles were one day dispersed by a single note of a man's voice. She was at the piano, it being afternoon, and was so used to the shuffling of the bearer's feet that she no longer turned to look when one was carried in and another, a dead one perhaps, was carried out.
She heard a laugh, however, that made her music suddenly mute. It was Lory de Vasselot who was laughing, as they carried him into the little church. He was explaining to the baron that he had heard of his hospital, and had caused himself to be carried thither as soon as he could be moved from the cottage, where he had been cared for by some peasants.
The laugh was silenced, however, at the sight of Mademoiselle Brun.
“You here, mademoiselle?” he said. “Alone, I hope,” he added, wincing as the bearers set him down.
“Yes, I am alone. Denise is safe at Fréjus with Jane de Mélide.”
“Ah!”