The night of his return Paris was en fête and in no sense impatient to reach his lonely house—for it seemed to him this night the loneliest house in the world—he walked without haste up town along the quays.
It was hard to forget that not fifty miles away he had left the cool forests, their tempting roads, their alluring alleys. He had forgotten that it was the annual celebration and that at this late hour the fête would be in full swing, and as he strolled meditating along the Seine the spirit of the gay populace—good-humor, reckless pleasure, and the joie de vivre—poured itself out around him like cordial, like a generous gift from an over-charged horn of cheer. In his gray clothes, modish panama, a little white rose plucked by a dear hand from the trellis at Fontainebleau still in his buttonhole, Bulstrode scarcely remarked the crowds or heard the music as he passed outdoor dancing stands and was jostled by a dancing throng.
His own street, as he approached it, welcomed him with a strong odor of onions and fried potatoes; it had apparently turned itself out of doors and all of the houses seemed to have emptied themselves into the narrow alley. A hurdy-gurdy playing before the hôtel meublê tinkled and jangled in the centre of a crowd of merry-makers, and the metallic melody and wild ascending octaves were the first sounds Bulstrode consciously heard since he left Fontainebleau.
In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing like a mad child, hair, arms, and feet flying; her voice, thin and piercing, every now and then above the rattle of the hand-organ, cried out the lines of a popular song whose meaning on her lips was particularly horrifying. The wine-shop family encircled her, encoring her vociferously. As she paused for breath the light from over the shop-door shone on her excited little face.
In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing
"I tired! Mon Dieu, que non! I could dance till morning. Play again, monsieur l'organiste. Play again."
Bulstrode, on the crowd's edge, watched her, and for once in his philanthropic history made no attempt to rescue. As Prosper let his master in he said:
"It's a shame, isn't it, monsieur? The people over there have let her run quite crazy. The poor little thing! Heaven knows where the mother is!"