From time to time the widow would rise and go to attend to her cookery, and at last she returned triumphant, bringing in an iron baking-dish in which rose the gently swelling golden-brown tôt-fait, smelling of orange-flower water.
Then came the roasted chestnuts in their brown, crisped shells, and the old lady brought from her press a bottle of fignolette, a liquor made of brandy and sweet wine.
When Claudette had cleared the table, the grandmother took up her knitting mechanically and sat near the stove, chatting gaily at first, but she now yielded to the combined effects of the warmth and the fignolette and fell asleep. Claudette put the lamp on the table, and she and the visitor were left to entertain each other. The girl, sprightly and light-hearted, did nearly all the talking. She had been brought up at Argonne, and described the neighborhood with such exactness that Boinville seemed to be carried back to his native place; as the room was warm Claudette had opened a window, and the fresh air came in laden with the odors of the market-garden, and the gurgling sound of a fountain, while farther off was heard the bell of the Capuchin convent.
Hubert Boinville had an hallucination, for which the fignolette, and the blue eyes of his young countrywoman were responsible. It seemed as if twenty years had rolled backward and that he was still in his native village. The wind in the fruit trees was the rustling of the Argonne forest, the soft murmur of running water was the caressing voice of the river Aire. His youth, which for twenty years had been buried under old papers and deeds was now revived, and before him were the blue laughing eyes of Claudette, looking at him so artlessly that his long torpid heart awoke suddenly and beat a delightful pit-a-pat against his breast.
Suddenly the old lady awoke with a start and stammered an apology. M. Boinville rose, for it was time to go, and after thanking the widow warmly for her hospitality and promising to come again, he extended his hand to Claudette. Their eyes met, and the deputy governor’s glance was so earnest that the young girl’s eyelids drooped suddenly. She accompanied him down stairs, and when they reached the house door he clasped her hand again, but without knowing what to say to her. And yet his heart was full.
* * * * *
Hubert Boinville continued to give, as is said in official language, “active and brilliant impulse to the Department.” The ministerial machine went on heaping up on his desk the daily grist of reports and papers, and the sittings of the Council, audiences, commissions and other official duties kept him so busy that he could not find a spare hour in which to go to the humble lodgings near the Capuchin convent. In the midst of his work, however, his thoughts often wandered back to the humble little dinner, and several times his attention was distracted from an official document by a vision of Claudette’s bright azure eyes, which seemed to flutter about on the paper like a pair of blue butterflies. When he returned to his gloomy bachelor apartment, those eyes went before him, and seemed to laugh merrily as he stirred his dull fire, and then he thought again of the dinner in the cheerful room, of the fire blazing up gaily in the delft stove, and of the young girl’s merry prattle, which had temporarily resuscitated the sensation of his twenty-first year. More than once he went to his mirror and looked gloomily at his gray-streaked beard, thought of his loveless youth, and of his increasing years, and said with La Fontaine:
“Have I passed the time for loving?”
Then he would be seized with a sort of tender homesickness which filled him with dismay, and made him regret that he had never married.
One cloudy afternoon toward the end of December, the solemn usher opened the door and announced: