“Well,” continued Papa Bouchard, whose bonhomie increased with every sip of champagne, “I suppose I shall have to manage a woman some day, for, to be very confidential, my dear Madame Vernet, I am in an excellent position to marry, and after a while I think I shall not be satisfied with liberty. I shall want power, too—the power of controlling another destiny, another heart, another will besides my own; so I shall marry a wife.” Papa Bouchard said this with an air of the greatest determination, swelling out his waistcoat, and at the same moment the parrot shrieked out laughing, “Oh, what an old fool!”
“What’s that? What’s that?” cried Monsieur Bouchard, indignantly, turning to François. He was a little confused by the champagne and Madame Vernet’s bright eyes.
“If you please, Monsieur, it is that troublesome parrot. I shall tell the proprietor how very annoying the bird is—he has only just got it—and I am sure to-morrow morning it will be sent away.”
Monsieur Bouchard had to be satisfied with this. His enjoyment, however, was now too deep for Pierrot to ruffle except for a moment. Monsieur Bouchard was living—living cycles of time, and life was taking on a color, an exuberance, a melody that quite turned his otherwise excellent head. He was delighted with Madame Vernet’s exposition of her inability and indisposition to manage a man. “That’s the sort of wife I’ll have when I marry,” he thought to himself, taking another shy at the champagne. “None of your managing sort—I’ve been managed too much already, heaven knows.” And inspired by these pleasing reflections, he said, tenderly, to Madame Vernet, offering her his arm:
“Come, Madame, let us take a little stroll in search of your uncle and aunt. Do you see that sweet, retired little alley, all roses and myrtles and honeysuckles, with a lot of cooing pigeons nestling among them? Perhaps we may find your uncle and aunt amid the roses. And, Madame, I may say to you, I don’t want a managing wife, and I don’t know any man who does. I want a dependent creature—sturdy oak and clinging vine, you know—I want a clinger. And if she has already tried her hand on another man, so much the better. I get the benefit of her experience. The fact is, Madame, I was born to console—I’m a consoler of the first water. Now, pray take my arm and let us explore the wilderness of roses and myrtles.”
Madame Vernet hung her head, but Papa Bouchard insisted. When at last she rose she threw aside the graceful little wrap round her shoulders, and there, gleaming on her throat, was the paste necklace.
Monsieur Bouchard received a distinct and unpleasant shock as he recognized the troublesome object, and he was nowise relieved by Madame Vernet saying, in her softest and most insinuating manner:
“How charming it was of you to give me this lovely ornament!”
Monsieur Bouchard would have dropped Madame Vernet’s arm, but she held on to him. This was certainly a very disagreeable incident. He had not given her the necklace—he never dreamed of giving it to her—he had been very much annoyed at her failure to return it, and——
But what were Monsieur Bouchard’s feelings in comparison with those of Léontine and de Meneval, both of whom were watching every movement of Papa Bouchard and Madame Vernet? Their laughing faces changed like magic. They stood—Léontine and Victor—horror-stricken, and as if turned to stone, each pale, trembling, and afraid to meet the eye of the other. But as, after a minute or two of agonized surprise, they began to recover from the first shock of their discovery, they felt the necessity of concealing their feelings from each other, and at the same time not losing sight of the forty thousand franc necklace.