He bowed to Madame de Rastignac ceremoniously, and went away, followed by the rest of the company.
“You saw his embarrassment,” said Rastignac to his wife; “he had no malicious intention in what he said.”
“It is of no consequence. I was saying just now to Madame de l’Estorade’s that your past life had given you a number of detestable acquaintances.”
“But, my dear, the King himself is compelled to smile graciously on men he would fain put in the Bastille,—if we still had a Bastille and the Charter permitted him.”
Madame de Rastignac made no reply, and without bidding her husband good-night, she went up to her room. A few moments later the minister went to the private door which led into it, and not finding the key in the lock, he said, “Augusta!” in the tone of voice a simple bourgeois might have used in such a case.
For all answer, he heard a bolt run hastily on the other side of the door.
“Ah!” he thought to himself with a gesture of vexation, “there are some pasts very different from that door,—they are always wide open to the present.”
Then, after a moment’s silence, he added, to cover his retreat, “Augusta, I wanted to ask you what hour Madame de l’Estorade receives. I ought to call upon her to-morrow, after what happened here to-night.”
“At four o’clock,” said the young wife through the door,—“on her return from the Tuileries, where she takes the children to walk every day.”
One of the questions that were frequently put by Parisian society after the marriage of Madame de Rastignac was: “Does she love her husband?”