The habit was quite a serious thing with him. He indulged it, posing theatrically, even at his own home and before his own servant, old Potais, formerly prompter at the Odéon, who, his memory too being stuffed with passages from the classic tragedies, replied to his master with alexandrine for alexandrine, tirade for tirade. The effect was too ludicrous to be described.
Notwithstanding this bit of absurdity, Dumesnil, as we have seen, was an honest fellow. He was quite moved as he took his seat near Mme. Paul Meyrin, his daughter, his little Lise, as he kept on repeating to himself, in bending on her covert and tender glances.
No one present suspected his paternity, any more than Lise herself did. The old comedian was at once happy and proud of the secret he alone held, which made the young woman dearer to him than ever. It was as if he foreboded that the day would come when she would need his protection.
CHAPTER III.
MOTHERHOOD.
The relations now established between her sister-in-law and herself seemed at first to fill the cup of Lise's happiness, for since her marriage she had suffered much from the estrangement of Frantz and his wife, partly through wounded vanity, but chiefly on account of her affection for her husband.
She could only see in the attitude taken in the Rue de Douai a lasting censure on her union, and knowing the plasticity of Paul's character she feared that in time he would be affected by it, so that she rejoiced at having dissipated the cloud. She was truly happy when she saw the whole family return to her. Mme. Frantz's remarks, often ironical though they were, did not trouble her a moment in her joy.
She was the first to laugh about them with Mme. Daubrel and Dumesnil. A day rarely passed without the latter calling on her. Lise always received him in very friendly fashion, and let no chance escape of expressing her gratitude for the warmth he had shown in taking her part. Notwithstanding the absurdities of the good man, she feeling a great friendship for him, did not disguise it; and one day when she renewed her assurance of it, offering him her hand, Dumesnil was so touched that he could not find, to thank her with, a single one of the alexandrines with which his memory was usually so richly loaded.
After responding respectfully to the pressure of her hand and stammering out a few words, he was obliged to turn away on pretense of looking at a new painting of Paul's. He had need to dry his eyes, which had filled with tears at the affectionate welcome of his daughter, who was now won back to him.
It would be impossible to tell the pride the old actor felt in seeing Lise reign over this gathering of artists and literary men, most of them celebrities in the world whose meeting-place was her drawing-room or rather Paul's studio. He listened in admiration of her as she gave her opinion on the last new book, the play of the previous evening, or a lately exhibited picture. And when she took her seat at the piano to play the most striking passages in an opera just published, how her masterly execution ravished him!
"What a great artiste she would have been," he would say to himself at such moments, "if her fool of a mother had not made a princess of her. Ah, blood will show itself. She is my true daughter."