“And he wants to be a statesman!” said Chapuzot to himself as he returned to his reports.
Victorin went home, still full of perplexities which he could confide to no one.
At dinner the Baroness joyfully announced to her children that within a month their father might be sharing their comforts, and end his days in peace among his family.
“Oh, I would gladly give my three thousand six hundred francs a year to see the Baron here!” cried Lisbeth. “But, my dear Adeline, do not dream beforehand of such happiness, I entreat you!”
“Lisbeth is right,” said Celestine. “My dear mother, wait till the end.”
The Baroness, all feeling and all hope, related her visit to Josepha, expressed her sense of the misery of such women in the midst of good fortune, and mentioned Chardin the mattress-picker, the father of the Oran storekeeper, thus showing that her hopes were not groundless.
By seven next morning Lisbeth had driven in a hackney coach to the Quai de la Tournelle, and stopped the vehicle at the corner of the Rue de Poissy.
“Go to the Rue des Bernardins,” said she to the driver, “No. 7, a house with an entry and no porter. Go up to the fourth floor, ring at the door to the left, on which you will see ‘Mademoiselle Chardin—Lace and shawls mended.’ She will answer the door. Ask for the Chevalier. She will say he is out. Say in reply, ‘Yes, I know, but find him, for his bonne is out on the quay in a coach, and wants to see him.’”
Twenty minutes later, an old man, who looked about eighty, with perfectly white hair, and a nose reddened by the cold, and a pale, wrinkled face like an old woman’s, came shuffling slowly along in list slippers, a shiny alpaca overcoat hanging on his stooping shoulders, no ribbon at his buttonhole, the sleeves of an under-vest showing below his coat-cuffs, and his shirt-front unpleasantly dingy. He approached timidly, looked at the coach, recognized Lisbeth, and came to the window.
“Why, my dear cousin, what a state you are in!”