'Everything is at your disposition, and all the household at your command. You will excuse me if myself I leave you for awhile to go and see if I can be of any use to those less happily fated persons—qui braillaient là-bas.'
She laughed.
'Ah! you were always a Don Quixote. Even Madame Nadège has not cured you.'
'Your servants may have been hurt, or worse still, your fourgons damaged. I will bring you news of them,' said Othmar, with an irony which affronted whilst it amused her.
She went to her own apartments pour se débarbouiller; and a little later, surrounded by her fellow-travellers, sat down to supper in the summer dining-hall, which shed its dazzling light far out on to the dusky lawns and the pale aisle of the white roses; there was a banquet fit for the gods, though prepared at such short notice; the delicate wines circulated quickly; the adventure was amusing; the whole thing unexpected. Blanche de Laon and all her companions were in the highest spirits, in a more vulgar world they might even have been thought a little intoxicated; their laughter rang frequent and shrill and long over the quiet gardens and the royal woods.
Meanwhile their host went to the scene of the late disaster, and found a sight of frightful destruction and of many deaths, while scores of poor horned cattle, mutilated and moaning, lay in pitiful heaps of bruised and bleeding misery upon the iron way.
It was noon in the following day when he returned to Amyôt, where all his unbidden guests were slumbering soundly and late after their alarm and their fatigues.
He, tired out himself, went to his own rooms and rested as well as he could rest for the sights and sounds of suffering which haunted him in his sleep. He had done what he could to alleviate it; but that all seemed so little and so inefficacious. At sunset he met all his undesired visitors at dinner.
'Your wife is still in Russia?' asked Blanchette that evening.