The deputy bit his lip and reddened, while a suppressed titter ran through the company. This suspicion of complicity with the police, which the established system of compression and its inevitable consequence, espionage, engendered too readily, was apt to fall sometimes on the most unlikely subjects; in the present instance, however, it was all the more mortifying because public rumor had paved the way for credulity by ascribing the violent antagonism of the Deputy de la Gauche to the fact of his having been disappointed in obtaining a prefecture under the existing government. But Berthe, though she disliked and mistrusted him, was annoyed that he should be made uncomfortable in her salon. She disapproved of the turn the conversation was taking, and by way of diverting it, without breaking off too precipitately from the subject under discussion, she said, addressing an academician who had just joined the circle:
“Is it not quite possible, admitting panic to be the first condition of contagion, that the presence of the Empress in the midst of the sick and the dying may have had such an effect on the morale of the people as could sufficiently explain the immediate decrease in the number of deaths? Instruct us, Monsieur le Philosophe!”
“Madame, I come here to learn rather than to teach,” replied the man of science with the gallantry of his threescore years and ten; “but, since you do me the honor to ask my opinion, I confess that it has the good grace to agree with your own. The people were imbued with the belief that to breathe the infected atmosphere was to die. The Empress, of her own free impulse, came boldly into the midst of it, stood among the dying and the dead, breathed long draughts of contagion, and did not die. Therefore contagion is a fallacy, and panic, instead of killing, is forthwith killed.”
“Your therefore, monsieur, is admirable,” said the Princess de M——, tapping her parasol on the arm of her chair. “Now, let us have a truce of the plague, and talk of something else.”
“Yes,” said Berthe, “or else talking may raise a panic, and we shall all catch it. Have you been lately to the theatre, monsieur?”
“I went last night to see La Beauté du Diable,” replied the philosopher.
“Ah! And what did you think of it?”
“I think, madame—que la France est bien malade,” said the old man gravely.
“One need not be un des quarante to find that out,” remarked the Deputy de la Gauche with a sneer.
“Is it so very bad?” inquired Berthe, turning a deaf ear to the uncivil commentary.