He took a candle and did the honours of the deserted dust-ridden house in the manner of the high calling which had been his twenty years ago when Charles X was king. For some there lingers a certain pathos in the sight of a belated survival, while the majority of men and women are ready to smile at it instead. And yet the Monarchy lasted eight centuries and the Revolution eight years. Perhaps Fate may yet exact payment for the excesses of those eight years from a nation for which the watching world already prepares a secondary place in the councils of empire.
The larger room had been assigned to Loo. There was a subtle difference in the Marquis’s manner toward him. He made an odd bow as he quitted the room.
“There,” said Colville, whose room communicated with this great apartment by a dressing-room and two doors. He spoke in English, as they always did when they were alone together. “There—you are launched. You are lancé, my friend. I may say you are through the shoals now and out on the high seas—”
He paused, candle in hand, and looked round the room with a reflective smile. It was obviously the best room in the house, with a fireplace as wide as a gate, where logs of pine burnt briskly on high iron dogs. The bed loomed mysteriously in one corner with its baldachin of Gobelin tapestry. Here, too, the dim scent of fallen monarchy lingered in the atmosphere. A portrait of Louis XVI in a faded frame hung over the mantelpiece.
“And the time will come,” pursued Colville, with his melancholy, sympathetic smile, “when you will find it necessary to drop the pilot—to turn your face seaward and your back upon old recollections and old associations. You cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs, my friend.”
“Oh yes,” replied Barebone, with a brisk movement of the head, “I shall have to forget Farlingford.”
Colville had moved toward the door that led to his own room. He paused, examining the wick of the candle he carried in his hand. Then, though glib of speech, he decided in favour of silence, and went away without making reply.
Loo sat down in a grey old arm-chair in front of the fire. The house was astoundingly noiseless, though situated in what had once been the heart of Paris. It was one of the few houses left in this quarter with a large garden. And the traffic passing in and out of the Ruelle St. Jacob went slipshod on its own feet. The busy crackle of the wood was the only sound to break a silence which seemed part of this vast palace of memories.
Loo had ridden far and was tired. He smiled grimly at the fire. It is to be supposed that he was sitting down to the task he had set himself—to forget Farlingford.
There was a great reception at the Hotel Gemosac that night, and after twenty years of brooding silence the rooms, hastily set in order, were lighted up.