Faber laughed.
"No money is too much for a good woman," he said.
III
They followed the programme afterwards, driving right round the Bois and returning to the Jardin du Luxembourg.
The day had fallen bitterly cold again, and a light snow whitened the trees in the famous avenues. Paris took a romantic mantle and covered her pretty shoulders daintily. Habitués fled to the cafés and ensconced themselves in warm corners; fur-clad women sank deep in the cushions of their motors; there were ridiculously dressed children scampering about the Bois and crying, "Dieu, comme il fait froid"—a fairy-like scene quite characteristic of a city which is rarely serious, and then tragically so. Through this Faber passed to his father's house. He had become silent and preoccupied—a man of few emotions, but of one which had never been absent from his life.
His father! How often he had tried to create the living man from the insufficient pictures of that time!
They had told him that John Faber was tall and Saxon haired—a cheery, business-like, unobtrusive fellow, very generous, far-seeing beyond his epoch. He had founded the house of Faber at Charleston, and had come over to Europe to learn Eastern methods. He was in Paris for the purpose of studying the new French artillery when the war broke out, and had lived for three months there, in the little house overlooking the gardens of the Luxembourg. Such was the man whom General d'Arny had shot in that very street, swearing he was of the Communards. A fever of anger fell suddenly upon the son as he remembered his mother's story. Good God, his own father! What years of affection they would have spent together but for that mad ferocity of the Commune! How the one would have helped the other! And the fortune—he would have poured it into his father's lap and waited for his words of pride. His father—shot there in that silent street—the man whom his mother had loved as woman rarely has loved in the human story.
He left the car at the corner by the Catholic Institute and walked down the Rue d'Assas to its junction with the Rue de Fleurus. Naturally, the condition of things had altered very much, and there were many new buildings in the vicinity. He discovered certain landmarks, but others had vanished into the limbo of the municipal gods and trim modern "blocks" had taken their places. For all that, he believed that he could identify the actual house in which these things had happened, and when he had located it, he knocked upon the door, and was answered by a trim old woman, who seemed much put out at the occurrence. Bertie Morris was quite equal to such an occasion. "Give her five francs," he said. It was done immediately.
"Who lives here now, madame?"
"Monsieur Brocas, the advocate—for many years, he and his mother."