"I thought as much," said Wynne. "Come back now to me, and in the fall or sooner something better may turn up; but for a month or two take a holiday. Your wages will go on. Now, do not protest. You need the rest, and you have earned it." With this he added: "And come out to Merion. My wife wants to thank you; and madame must come, too. Have you heard that we are to have a new French minister in April?"
"Indeed? I suppose he will have a great welcome from the Republicans."
"Very likely," said Wynne.
It was more from loss of blood that René had suffered than from the gravity of the wound. His recovery was rapid, and he was soon released from the tyranny which woman loves to establish about the sickness-fettered man. The vicomtesse had some vague regret when he asserted his independence, for again he had been a child, and her care of him a novel interest in a life of stringent beliefs, some prejudices, and very few positive sources of pleasure. The son at this time came to know her limitations better and to recognize with clearer vision how narrow must always have been a life of small occupations behind which lay, as yet unassailed, the pride of race and the more personal creed of the obligations of a caste which no one, except Mistress Wynne, ventured to describe to Schmidt as needing social spectacles. "A provincial lady," she said; "a lady, but of the provinces." The German smiled, which was often his only comment upon her shrewd insight and unguarded talk.
The vicomtesse settled down again to her life of books, church, and refusals to go anywhere except to Darthea at Merion, where she relaxed and grew tender among the children. She would have her son go among gayer people, and being free for a time he went as bidden, and was made much of at the town houses of the gay set. But as he would not play loo for money, and grew weary at last of the rôle of Othello and of relating, much against his will, his adventures to a variety of attentive Desdemonas who asked questions about his life in France, of which he had no mind to speak, he soon returned to the more wholesome company of Schmidt and the tranquil society of the widow's house.
Schmidt, with increasing attachment and growing intimacy of relation, began again the daily bouts with the foils, the long pulls on the river, and the talks at night when the house was quiet in sleep.
The grave young Huguenot was rather tired of being made to pass as a hero, and sternly refused the dinners of the Jacobin clubs, declining to claim for himself the credit of relieving the Jacobin vicomte, his kinsman.
The more certain news of war between France and Great Britain had long since reached Philadelphia, and when, one afternoon in April, Mr. Alexander Hamilton, just come from a visit to New York, appeared at the widow's, he said to Schmidt that Citizen Genêt, the French minister, had reached Charleston in the Ambuscade, a frigate. He had brought commissions for privateers, and had already sent out two, the Citizen Genêt and the Sans Culottes, to wage war on English commerce. The Secretary of State, Jefferson, had protested against the French consul's condemning prizes, but the republican Jacobins, gone mad with joy, took sides against their leader, and mocked at the President's proclamation of neutrality. Such was his news. Mr. Hamilton was depressed and had lost his usual gaiety. It was all bad, very bad. The man's heart ached for the difficulties of his friend, the harassed President.
Meanwhile imitative folly set the Jacobin fashions of long pantaloons and high boots for good republicans. The young men took to growing mustachios. Tricolor cockades appeared in the streets, while the red cap on barbers' poles and over tavern signs served, with news of the massacres in France, to keep in De Courval's mind the thought of his father's fate. In the meantime, amid feasts and clamorous acclaim, Genêt came slowly north with his staff of secretaries.
Schmidt saw at this time how depressed his young friend had become and felt that in part at least it was due to want of steady occupation. Trying to distract him one evening, he said: "Let us go to the fencing school of the Comte du Vallon. I have long meant to ask you. It is late, but the émigrés go thither on a Friday. It will amuse you, and you want something I cannot teach. Your defense is slow, your attack too unguarded."