When France realized that Napoleon III had fallen, she turned and rent his memory. No dog, it appears, may have his day, but some cur must needs yelp at his heels. Indeed (and this applies to literary fame as to emperors), it is a sure sign that a man is climbing high if the little dogs bark below.
And the little dogs and the curs remembered now the many slights cast upon them. France had been betrayed—was ruined. The twenty most prosperous years of her history were forgotten. There was a rush of patriots to Paris, and another rush of the chicken-hearted to the coast and the frontier.
The Baron de Mélide telegraphed to the baroness to quit Fréjus and go to Italy. And the baroness telegraphed a refusal to do so.
Lory de Vasselot fretted as much as one of his buoyant nature could fret under this forced inactivity. The sunshine, the beautiful surroundings, and the presence of friends, made him forget France at times, and think only of the present. And Denise absorbed his thoughts of the present and the future. She was a constant puzzle to him. There seemed to be two Denise Langes: one who was gay with that deep note of wisdom in her gaiety, which only French women compass, with odd touches of tenderness and little traits of almost maternal solicitude, which betrayed themselves at such moments as the wounded man attempted to do something which his crippled condition or his weakness prevented him from accomplishing. The other Denise was clear-eyed, logical, almost cold, who resented any mention of Corsica or of the war. Indeed, de Vasselot had seen her face harden at some laughing reference made by him to his approaching recovery. He was quick enough to perceive that she was endeavouring to shut out of her life all but the present, which was unusual; for most pin their faith on the future until they are quite old, and their future must necessarily be a phantom.
“I do not understand you, mademoiselle,” he said, one day, on one of the rare occasions when she had allowed herself to be left alone with him. “You are brave, and yet you are a coward!”
And the resentment in her eyes took him by surprise. He did not know, perhaps, that the wisest men never see more than they are intended to see.
“Pray do not try,” she answered. “The effort might delay your recovery and your return to the army.”
She laughed, and presently left him. It is one thing to face the future, and another to sit quietly awaiting its approach. The majority of people spoil their lives by going out to meet the future, deliberately converting into a reality that which was only a dread. They call it knowing the worst.
The next morning Mademoiselle Brun, with a composed face and blinking eyes, mentioned casually to Lory that she and Denise were going back to Corsica.
“But why?” cried Lory; “but why, my dear demoiselle?”