Duchemin was conscious of something like a shock of emotion, a sudden surging of some hunger that had long lain dormant in his being, unsuspected, how long he could not surmise, gaining strength in latency, waiting to be awakened and set free by one careless, sidelong look and smile of a strange woman.
"Eve," he whispered, unheard, "Eve de Montalais ..."
Then of a sudden he caught himself up sharply. It was natural enough that one should be susceptible to gentler impulses, at such a time, under circumstances so strange, so unforeseen, so romantic; but he must not, dared not, would not yield. That way danger lay.
Not that he feared danger; for like most of mankind he loved it well.
But here the danger held potentialities if not the certainty of pain--pain, it might be, not for one alone.
Besides, it was too absurd ....
[V]
PHINUIT & CO.
In the upshot, however, the necessity of his dismal forebodings had nothing to do with the length of time devoted by Monsieur Duchemin to kicking idle heels in the town of Nant; where the civil authorities proved considerate in a degree that--even making allowance for the local prestige of the house of Montalais--gratified and surprised the confirmed Parisian. For that was just what the good man was at heart and would be till he died, the form in which environment of younger years had moulded him: less French than Parisian, sharing the almost insular ignorance of life in the provinces characteristic of the native boulevardier; to whom the sun is truly nothing more or less than a spotlight focussed exclusively on Paris, leaving the rest of France in a sort of crepuscular gloom, the world besides steeped in eternal night.
The driver-guide of La Roque turned out to have been a thorough-paced scamp, well and ill-known to the gendarmerie; the wound sustained by Monsieur d'Aubrac bore testimony to the gravity of the affair, amply excusing Duchemin's interference and its fatal sequel; while the statements of Mesdames de Sévénié et de Montalais, duly becoming public property, bade fair to exalt the local reputation of André Duchemin to heroic stature. And, naturally, his papers were unimpeachable.