“Yes,” he had been known to say, “I was in Paris in ‘48. Never missed a meal.”
Whereas others, with much less at stake than this great banker, had omitted not only meals, but their night’s rest—night after night—in those stirring times.
John Turner was still asleep when the door leading to the Minister’s room was cautiously opened, showing an inner darkness such as prevails in an alcove between double doors. The door opened a little wider. No doubt the peeping eye had made sure that the occupant of the waiting-room was asleep. On the threshold stood a man of middle height, who carried himself with a certain grace and quiet dignity. He was pale almost to sallowness, a broad face with a kind mouth and melancholy eyes, without any light in them. The melancholy must have been expressed rather by the lines of the brows than by the eye itself, for this was without life or expression—the eye of a man who is either very short-sighted or is engaged in looking through that which he actually sees, to something he fancies he perceives beyond it.
His lips smiled, but the smile died beneath a neatly waxed moustache and reached no higher on the mask-like face. Then he disappeared in the outer darkness between the two doors, and the handle made no noise in turning.
In a few minutes an attendant, in a gay uniform, came in by the same door, without seeking to suppress the clatter of his boots on the oak floor.
“Holà! monsieur,” he said, in a loud voice. And Mr. John Turner crossed his legs and leant farther back in the chair, preparatory to opening his eyes, which he did directly on the new-comer’s face, without any of that vague flitting hither and thither of glance which usually denotes the sleeper surprised.
The eyes were of a clear blue, and Mr. Turner looked five years younger with them open than with them shut. But he was immensely stout.
“Well, my friend,” he said, soothingly; for the Minister’s attendant had a truculent ministerial manner. “Why so much noise?”
“The Minister will see you.”
John Turner yawned and reached for his hat.