“Glad! You deserve the Cross for it!” exclaimed the mayor. “It is the greatest service you could have rendered to the town. Some day or other they shall hear of it.”
“I really must disabuse you of a false impression,” began the reporter. “Anxious as I was to be of use, my share in this matter—”
“Tut, tut!” said M. Gombard, “none of this nonsense with me, my dear fellow. Keep your own counsel—quite right; but don’t be such an idiot as to deny your services to those who can reward them. Mark my words: Vous irez loin!” He tugged gently at the reporter’s ear, and, shaking hands with him, sent him away happy and elated, but utterly mystified.
The affair made some noise; a procès verbal was drawn up, there was an interrogatory of the clerks, and before a week the escape of the spy was forgotten.
Just before Easter—that is, three months after this little electioneering incident—M. Gombard had occasion to go to Cabicol again. This time, however, he was not alone; he was accompanied by M. le Préfet, the new one, who was making a tournée in his kingdom, and took the mayor with him by way of a moral support. He was a timid man; he knew that his appointment was unpopular, and that M. Gombard’s influence might help to reconcile people to it.
They alighted at the Jacques Bonhomme to change horses and take some refreshment before officially inspecting the town of Cabicol. M. Gombard was anxious to get some news of Mlle. Bobert,
when the marriage had taken place, and how it was supposed to prosper so far; but there was no opportunity of saying a word to the landlord, for the prefect was there, and M. Gombard had no plausible excuse for leaving him. He could not help remarking the strange expression of the landlord’s countenance on first beholding him; the scared, incredulous glance he cast upon him, and the mysterious manner in which, on assisting him from the chaise, he pressed his arm and whispered: “I congratulate you, monsieur; I congratulate you.”
What could the fellow mean by this extraordinary behavior! But the mayor remembered how oddly he had behaved on the occasion of his former visit, and set him down as an original, a harmless monomaniac of some sort.
Just as they were starting, and the prefect was receiving the compliments of M. le Curé at the door of the Jacques Bonhomme, M. Gombard seized the opportunity of a word with the landlord. Pointing his cane towards the old house opposite, he observed in a careless manner:
“Your pretty heiress is married by this, of course? What is her name now?”