“True,” replied Grandin. “I have been photographed, actually photographed when I appeared upon the street.”
One day in midwinter two great honors were paid the Grandin company of jugglers, acrobats, and singers. A card was brought up to the little sitting room where Diane and Madame Grandin were making a suit of stage clothes for Grandin, who was not only without his coat, but also sans-culotte. It was a beautiful card inscribed Captain, the Marquis Egmont de St. Angel, Twenty-fifth Regiment of Chasseurs. The two Grandins and Diane were immediately beside themselves. Diane, who had on a large white apron, took it off and put it on again, frantically, and rushed to the little mirror to tidy her hair when it all came tumbling down her back in a glorious mass. Grandin tore the pinned-up jacket and short trousers off and made a dash for his clothes which Madame Grandin seized and withheld violently, mistaking them in her agitation for the stage clothes. In the midst of the commotion, while the Marquis was cooling his heels in the narrow passage below, François passed him and walked upstairs to the little sitting room.
“He is downstairs!” shrieked Diane incoherently, trying with trembling fingers to put up her rich hair. “He is downstairs, and Jean didn’t want us to take this sitting room! He said we didn’t need it, and now Madame Grandin won’t give Grandin his trousers, and I don’t know what I shall do!”
François, however, with his usual coolness, knew exactly what to do. He thrust Grandin into his own room, threw the scissors and the work things and scraps into Diane’s apron, which he gathered up and flung after Grandin, and going to the top of the stairs called out, laughing:
“Come up, my Marquis Egmont of the Holy Angels.”
The Marquis walked in smiling, having heard all of the commotion. Madame Grandin greeted him with deep agitation, having never received a marquis before, as indeed, neither had Diane.
Diane’s usually pale face was scarlet, and she sat as demurely as a nun on the edge of her chair, with downcast eyes, responding “Yes, m’sieu,” and “No, m’sieu” to the Marquis’ chaste remarks. François remained so as to keep Madame Grandin and Diane from a total collapse. As he looked at the Marquis it occurred to François that any girl might fall in love with so splendid an exterior. He was certainly the most highbred-looking man François had ever seen, not excepting himself. The Marquis’ undress uniform fitted him to perfection, and showed the supple beauty of his straight and sinewy figure. Then his voice was peculiarly sweet, not big and sonorous like Grandin’s, but rather low with a crispness in it like a man accustomed to giving orders.
They talked about nothings, as people do when the ladies of a party are not quite at ease. The Marquis was perfectly at ease, however, and had a laughing devil in his eye which responded promptly to the laughing devil in the eyes of François. Diane’s voice was ever peculiarly sweet, and it occurred to François that the talk between her and the Marquis was like a duet of birds in spring, or the rich notes of the ’cello blending with the sharp sweetness of the violin. And they were just the right height, and Diane was dark-eyed and black-haired and white-skinned, while the Marquis was chestnut-haired and blond and bronzed.
The Marquis complained gently to Diane that she would never accept his invitations to supper, and asked her if she would do him the honor to sup with him that night, when he hoped also to have the company of Monsieur and Madame Grandin and Monsieur le Bourgeois.
“I thank you, no,” replied Diane sweetly. “I made a resolution before we came to Bienville not to accept any invitations to supper.”