Fortunately at that moment Basil came striding along the terrace, creating a much-needed diversion, and Garrassime, seizing the occasion, suggested to Piotr to come and arrange his camp for Lieutenant Pavlo’s inspection.
As soon as they had disappeared Pavlo irritably turned to Marguerite and asked her, with some military brusqueness, “What the dickens was up?” at which simple remark Marguerite, to everybody’s distress, suddenly broke into a passion of tears. Marguerite—the “Gamin,” Knight of the Golden Spur, weeping, was something unheard, undreamed of! Basil took her in his arms, looking savagely at poor Pavlo, who, in utter consternation, was gazing helplessly at Régis.
“Here!” the latter cried. “Take your boy. He deserves a reward, and so do you.” And he put little Pavlo hastily on his mother’s lap. “Meanwhile,” he continued, “I’ll go and keep Master Piotr away. Come with me, Pavlo, and I’ll tell you what’s amiss.”
“Little Pavlo” was undoubtedly breaking from the chrysalis of babyhood. “Il gigotte comme un petit diable,” Divyne, the nurse, proudly stated to Garrassime, whose proficiency in French, and even in Breton, was growing daily more remarkable. “Il va se mettre a marcher tout à l’heure!” declared Divyne, and Garrassime’s face was a study of mingled appreciation for his littlest master’s precocity, and of terror at the thought of the sole and only Palitzin Tyrant left—namely, Prince Piotr-the-Jealous—as Pavlo de Salvières had nicknamed him in an imprudent moment. Nor was Garrassime the only one at the Tour du Chevalier who entertained that mixture of feelings, three parts delight and one part anxiety. Basil, since the day of the baby’s first attempt to talk, was at a loss what to do; Marguerite, continually pulled between her worship of her own beautiful son and her love for Piotr, was growing thin; Régis was continually on the watch; and Pavlo thought within himself that a sound flogging in the right quarter would avoid many difficulties, but, being extremely adaptable, he forebore to say so, having noticed how far more than useless such an observation would be.
One rather rough afternoon, following a storm when the sea was still heaving from its recent stress, and the sky a mass of glorious white and pale-gray clouds tossing about against patches of intermittently revealed azure, Marguerite was changing from her morning gown into her riding-habit, when Divyne knocked at the door of her dressing-room and, being bidden to enter, did so, carrying the baby on her arm. A prettier child it would have been difficult to find. Dimpled like a cherub, his satiny round face crowned by an already thick crop of curls—blonde as his mother’s—and lighted by eyes of blue resembling hers quite startlingly in shape and color, he was bubbling with happy life.
“Madame la Princesse,” quoth Divyne, smiling from one ear to the other, “he has just said it again—Malou—and laugh! Oh, ma doué, he laughed so one could have heard him as far as the semaphore!”
Marguerite, turning away from her maid, who was about to unfasten her lace petticoat, took the boy in her arms and kissed him with the passion she could only indulge when certain of Piotr’s absence. She was in a hurry, for she was to meet Basil, Régis, and Pavlo the Greater, at her old favorite spot, the Carrefour of the Seven Sages, within the hour, and Ireland was already in the Cour-d’honneur with her horse and his, waiting; but, happy to have her darling all to herself for once, she began to pace up and down with him, holding him close and tight and kissing his fat little neck again and again. Suddenly Pavlo minor, as they passed the open door of the adjoining bedroom, caught sight of a portrait of Basil in the scarlet of his livrée as master of the fox-hounds, surrounded by his dogs. The likeness was vivid, and the baby, with a cry of recognition, said as plain as plain could be: “Papa! Papa!”
Marguerite, hardly believing her ears, ran into the room and, raising the baby high up, exclaimed rapturously: “Yes, my own little son, that’s your Papa! Your dear, dear Papa!”
Pavlo crowed with pleasure, throwing himself back on his mother’s pretty shoulder; then poking a pudgy finger into her soft cheek, opened his mouth and again spoke: “Malou,” he said, “Malou-maman.”