“To watch the governing power is a useful career, and, I may add, a very busy one.”
“You can fancy, monsieur,” said Rastignac, good-humoredly, “that if Beauvisage were in your place I should not have taken the trouble to argue with him; I may say, however, that he would have made my effort less difficult.”
“This meeting, which chance has brought about between us,” said Sallenauve, “will have one beneficial result; we understand each other henceforth, and our future meetings will always therefore be courteous—which will not lessen the strength of our convictions.”
“Then I must say to the king—for I had his royal commands to—”
Rastignac did not end the sentence in which he was, so to speak, firing his last gun, for the orchestra began to play a quadrille, and Nais, running up, made him a coquettish courtesy, saying,—
“Monsieur le ministre, I am very sorry, but you have taken my partner, and you must give him up. He is down for my eleventh quadrille, and if I miss it my list gets into terrible confusion.”
“You permit me, monsieur?” said Sallenauve, laughing. “As you see, I am not a very savage republican.” So saying, he followed Nais, who led him along by the hand.
Madame de l’Estorade, comprehending that this fancy of Nais was rather compromising to the dignity of the new deputy, had arranged that several papas and mammas should figure in the same quadrille; and she herself with the Scottish lad danced vis-a-vis to her daughter, who beamed with pride and joy. In the evolutions of the last figure, where Nais had to take her mother’s hand, she said, pressing it passionately,—
“Poor mamma! if it hadn’t been for him, you wouldn’t have me now.”
This sudden reminder so agitated Madame de l’Estorade, coming as it did unexpectedly, that she was seized with a return of the nervous trembling her daughter’s danger had originally caused, and was forced to sit down. Seeing her change color, Sallenauve, Nais, and Madame Octave de Camps ran to her to know if she were ill.