“Ah, douce, if there were a market for the exchange of such commodities, what a roaring trade would be done there! I never loved a woman yet but she offered me her life, or an instalment of it.”
“I have emptied your drawer,” laughing coyly. “There is just enough to keep Lewin in good humour till you are well again, and we can be partners at basset.”
“It will be very long before I play basset in London.”
“Oh, but indeed you will soon be well.”
“Well enough to change the scene, I hope. It needs change of places and persons to make life bearable. I long to be at the Louvre again, to see a play by Molière’s company, as only they can act, instead of the loathsome translations we get here, in which all that there is of wit and charm in the original is transmuted to coarseness and vulgarity. When I leave this bed, Lucrèce, it will be for Paris.”
“Why, it will be ages before you are strong enough for such a journey.”
“Oh, I will risk that. I hate London so badly, that to escape from it will work a miraculous cure for me.”
An armed neutrality! Even the children felt the change in the atmosphere of home, and nestled closer to their aunt, who never changed to them.
“Father mostly looks angry,” Henriette complained, “and mother is always unhappy, if she is not laughing and talking in the midst of company; and neither of them ever seems to want me. I wish I was grown up, so that I could be maid of honour to the Queen or the Duchess, and live at Whitehall. Mademoiselle told me that there is always life and pleasure at Court.”
“Your father does not love the Court, dearest, and mademoiselle should be wiser than to talk to you of such things, when she is here to teach you dancing and French literature.”