“But what can I do, madame?” asked Caroline.
“I beg pardon, mademoiselle, it’s like this. This lady, who has very good style and excellent manners, has nobody with her but her maid. She has not left her room since morning, and I am afraid that she is bored. I went up to her room for a moment just now, and told her that the guests were assembled in the salon this evening, and that she ought to come down, that it would divert her. She neither consented nor refused. She seems very shy; but if anyone of the party, like yourself, mademoiselle, should go up and urge her to come, I am certain that she would not refuse. Poor woman! she seems so miserable! I am convinced that in company she would forget her suffering a little.”
Several of the guests added their entreaties to the landlady’s. I myself, well pleased that the newspaper should be forgotten, urged Mademoiselle Derbin to bring us the invalid.
“Since you are so curious to see this lady, messieurs,” said Caroline, rising, “I will go to her as your ambassador. But do not rejoice overmuch beforehand, for I do not agree to succeed; and you will perhaps be obliged to content yourselves with addressing your compliments to the ladies who are in the salon now.”
Having said this with fascinating gayety, she left the salon with the landlady. That incident cast Bélan’s lawsuit into the shade, and I hoped that no one would recur to it; but I noticed that the old gentleman, who did not admit that he was beaten, had gone to a corner of the salon in evident ill humor, with the Gazette des Tribunaux still in his hand.
Several moments passed.
“Mademoiselle Derbin will not succeed,” said the Spaniard; “if that lady is ill, she will not leave her room.”
“Why not?” said a young man; “need a person become a hermit because she comes here to take the waters?”
“I believe that my niece will succeed, messieurs; for in truth she succeeds in everything that she undertakes, and if she has taken it into her head to bring this new guest here, be sure that she will not return alone. My niece takes after me; I have played perhaps thirty parts in my life—what am I saying? I have played more than fifty!—Well, I assure you that at least a dozen of them I have learned in twenty-four hours, on the spur of the moment, like that of Sganarelle. But that was very long!—By the way, I haven’t told you the effect that I produced on Molé. He had never seen me except in a servant’s part; to be sure, Sganarelle is a servant’s part, if you choose, but——”
“Here comes Mademoiselle Derbin, and she is bringing the lady,” said a young man who had opened the door of the salon.