Sooner or later the conversation of French ladies and gentlemen was apt to turn to the subject of love. On this also it appeared that the elderly author was skeptical. A saucy young lady asked him something about love in South America, and he made a laughing reply, and the company was vastly amused. Lanny didn't understand it, but afterward he gathered that M. France had once taken a lecture trip to the Argentine, and on the steamer had met a young actress; he had traveled with her, introducing her as his wife. Later, when he returned to France, he did not want her as a wife, but the young lady was disposed to insist, and there resulted a considerable scandal.
Also Lanny heard about a wealthy lady of Paris to whom this story had caused great distress. Madame de Caillavet was her name, and she was credited with having made the fame and fortune of Anatole France, setting up a salon for the display of his talents and driving this most indolent person to the task of writing books. She and her husband had maintained with France the relationship known as la vie à trois — life in threes, instead of pairs. No one had objected to that, but the Argentine actress had made four, and everyone considered her de trop.
Madame de Caillavet was dead now, so Anatole France no longer had a salon. Perhaps that was why it was possible for an American hostess to lure him to a tea party. After he had taken his departure, they all gossiped about him, saying as many malicious things as he himself had said about Cicero, Cleopatra, St. Cyprian, Joan of Arc, King Louis XV, the Empress Catherine of Russia, and many other personages of history whom he had quoted. However, all agreed that he was an extremely diverting person; they had been so well entertained that for two hours they had forgotten the disturbing news that the Austrian government had delivered to the Serbian government an ultimatum which practically required the abdication of the latter and the taking over of its police functions by Austrian officials.
V
Beauty went motoring with Harry Murchison. She was gone all day, and came back looking flushed and happy, and Lanny went to her room to chat. They would have little snatches like that — she would tell him where she had been, and the nice things that Prince This and Ambassador That had said to her.
But this time she wanted to talk about Harry. He was such an obliging and generous fellow, and his family in Pennsylvania was a very old one; he had an ancestor who had been a member of the First Continental Congress. Harry liked Lanny very much, calling him the best-mannered boy he had ever met; but he thought it was too bad for him not to have a chance to know his own country. “That's what Mr. Hackabury said, too,” remarked the boy.
But Beauty didn't want to talk about soap just then; she was interested in plate glass. “Tell me,” she persisted, “do you really like him?”
“Why, yes, I think he's all right.” Lanny was a bit reserved.
But then came a knockout. “How would you feel if I was to marry him?”
The boy would have had to be a highly trained diplomat to hide the dismay which smote him. The blood mounted to his cheeks, and he stared at his mother until she dropped her eyes. “Oh, Beauty!” he exclaimed. “What about Marcel?”