As his craft had calculated, the marquise was too simple in her goodness and too generous to bear malice. With feelings of intense gratitude that the stony path should grow so smooth, she forgave the suppliant freely, and even gently jested as to the proposed retreat. No, no; he must wear his hair shirt at Gange, she said, and having been granted full absolution, must, together with her, obliterate the past. She explained that it was her intention to have masters from Blois, frankly confessing that the education of the dear ones had soared far beyond her reach. "They shall come twice a week," the marquise explained, "and I will take lessons also. It will be delightful for us all to help each other and prepare our various tasks during the other days. You, Pharamond," she added cheerily, bent on helping him to forget, "may be of the greatest service to us, for you are clever and learned in books. You shall hold the post of assistant usher and explain what we cannot understand. Leave us? Never! What would Clovis do without you? I am afraid that you will have to study Mesmer's doctrines, so that he may not miss that woman. I am resolved that if it is essential to provide for him an affinity, that mysterious object, in the future, shall be of the other sex."
The new foundations were progressing prosperously. Pharamond had never contemplated abandoning the flesh-pots. Since the plan of an elopement with the heiress was doomed to failure through the interference of the dictatorial old maréchal, they must all be content to stop where they were, and, for the time being, dwell together. There was a lull in the political situation, so emigration might not prove necessary. Within the boundaries of France there was no safer refuge than Touraine. Rustic effervescence was subsiding. News arrived from time to time of massacres and burnings, but these were chiefly in the south, in districts surrounding cities.
With grateful reverence and many eloquent protestations, the abbé received the olive branch and set himself with alacrity to show how exceedingly clean he was washed. He impressed on Victor and Camille the angelic attributes of their mamma, strained every nerve to tighten the bonds that had grown slack, laid stress on the fact that though the beloved governess was, of course, one of the best of women, it was necessary for their sakes to provide teachers more advanced than she. The best side of the mercurial gentleman quite glittered with snowy rectitude, and mother and children were agreed that no one could do without the abbé.
A thorn in the flesh was the chevalier. A man who, too thirsty, babbles in his cups, is provoking; but when he becomes maudlin and is scarcely ever sober, he is a grievous trial to his comrades. Having turned over the new leaf it was exasperating to Pharamond to be constantly reminded of the old one at inconvenient seasons by a hiccuping sot; to be implored between vinous sobs "to make her happy." It was urgently necessary to take poor shaky Phebus in tow and treat him with strict severity. Once or twice, in disgust, he thought of getting rid of the sodden creature, and even mentioned the subject to Clovis. But the latter would not hear of his banishment.
"Where should we send him to alone?" he asked. "He would get into trouble and disgrace us. It was you who saddled us with him, so you must help us to bear the burthen."
The abbé gave up the point without further discussion, for in dealing with the weak it is wise to let them have their way in small matters in order to get your own in large ones. Moreover, if kept under surveillance, Phebus might be improved, and it is not well to throw wilfully aside a man, however helpless, over whom we have obtained complete ascendency.
Matters being arranged to his satisfaction so far, the astute and busy one bestirred himself about the marquis. Now that she was gone, Clovis had cause every hour, as she had foreseen, to regret Aglaé. Who so ingenious as she in disentangling knotty problems; who so clear of head in deciphering a theorem? Without her help, what was the use of the tub, or its precious contents? The evenings were interminable to him without his favourite music. The blessed violoncello reposed now in its box, for grunting on it all alone brought melancholy instead of solace to the musician. Before the cannon ball fell, neophyte and affinity had been concerting plans for removing the tub from a benighted neighbourhood to some more congenial sphere. Its blessings were wasted on rustic swine. Clovis longed to escape from the scene of his humiliation; burned to turn his back on Lorge; but there was a new and galling dread within, which kept him tongue-tied: a fear, that if he took too much upon himself the douche of an evil precedent would be turned on again; that the odious old rascal in Paris would warn him to obey his wife.
If you are ill-advised enough to espouse an heiress, you are pretty sure, sooner or later, to have her money flung in your face. Gabrielle had been so full of delicate tact with regard to the dangerous point, that Clovis had never been troubled about it until urgency had impelled de Brèze to twist the screw, and under the wrench he continued to wince and writhe. Calm and dreamy as he was, he had never overtly done anything to vex his wife--had drifted, and then been towed into troubled waters, whose turbidness, now that attention was called to them, was a matter for surprise. He had struggled in his feeble way with conscience, and, the governess assisting, had succeeded in lulling it to rest; and it was very distressing to his vanity that the sleeper should be so roughly wakened. Is it not always humiliating to be treated like a peccant school-boy?
I regret to state that the abbé, when in conference with the marquis, adroitly added to the chafing, by covert scratches and the insertion of little pins. "To a man of spirit," he would remark, deprecatingly, "it is painful to be led by the nose; none the less so, when the holder of the tongs happens to be the one whose duty is obedience." On such occasions, Clovis would turn to his brother with puzzled wrinklings of the brow that were piteous and yet ludicrous. "What am I to do?" he would groan. "The situation, as you say, is horrible; but I don't see a way out of the difficulty." Then the abbé would tap his shoulder and murmur, sighing, "Poor fellow. I pity you with all my being, but for all our sakes must exhort you to be civil to madame. Her wish is law to her papa. If she chose to ask the old scamp to eject us into the road, what else could we do but go?"
Thus it will be seen that Gabrielle's sanguine expressions of gratitude were somewhat premature. The disease of an importunate love for her spouse had submitted to surgical treatment, which was an advantageous change for both; but she guessed nothing of the Nessus shirt, that under the fine linen excoriated the tender skin of the lymphatic sensualist, or dreamed of the effect on his tissues of the abbé's little pins.