Returning, De Courval met Stephen Girard, who stopped him. Short, sallow, a little bald, and still slight of build, he was watching with a look of amusement the noisy mob in front of the hotel. "Ah, bonjour, monsieur. And you would not go as my supercargo. It is open for the asking." He spoke French of course. "These yonder are children, but they are not as serious as they think themselves. Come this afternoon to my farm on the neck and eat of my strawberries. There will be the French consul-general and the secretary Carteaux. No politics, mind you. My heart is with the revolutionary government at home, but my politics in America are here," and he struck his breeches' pocket. "I am not for war, monsieur."
De Courval excused himself, and went away murmuring: "Again, again! It must end. I must make it end. Ah, mother, mother!"
Schmidt, troubled by the young man's gloom and loss of spirits, did all he could, but characteristically made no effort to reopen a subject on which he had as yet reached no other decision than the counsel of delay.
The mother questioned her son. It was nothing. He was not quite well, and the heat of July was great. The German was yet more disturbed when one evening after the fencing lesson Du Vallon said: "I had here to-day two of the staff of that sacré Citizen Genêt. There is already talk of his recall for insolence to the President. Le bon Dieu be praised!"
"Why, Marquis, do you permit these cattle to come here?"
"One must live, Monsieur Schmidt."
"Perhaps."
"One of them is a pleasure to fence with—a Monsieur Carteaux, a meager Jacobin. I could not touch him."
"I should like to, with the buttons off the foils," said Schmidt.