Madame de Chassedot was so staggered by this unexpected sortie that she was actually struck dumb. “Do you know,” she said, after a pause, looking steadily at Berthe, and bringing out her words with slow emphasis—“do you know, madame, that my son has four millions of patrimony, and that he could have married any girl in France?”
“As to his marrying any girl in France, admitting that they were one and all ready to marry Monsieur de Chassedot, was he ready to marry them?” demanded Berthe significantly; “and as to his four millions, they are the very reason why he should marry a girl who had none. A woman who is as well born as himself, who is, you admit, pure as a lily, and pious as an angel, and, moreover, quite graceful and beautiful enough to satisfy your pride and his, and to make her an ornament as well as a treasure in your son’s house—a wife who will rescue him from much that I should fancy would have given you greater cause for tears than his marriage with such a woman as Hélène de Karodel. Candidly, chère marquise, I am so far from sympathizing with you that, if I had heard this news in any other way, my first impulse would have been to fly to you with my congratulations.”
Madame de Chassedot’s tears were flowing still, but perhaps less bitterly; she was going to speak when a noise of steps in the ante-chamber made her rise hastily, and look round for a means of escape.
“Into my bedroom!” said Berthe, pulling aside the portière.
The marquise pressed her hand, and disappeared through the cloud of blue satin just as the drawing-room door opened, and Hélène de Karodel, holding out her arms with a cry of joy, rushed into Berthe’s.
It was something of a disappointment to Hélène to find that Berthe already knew her secret. But there was much left to tell still. Most of the tale was told with blushes and smiles, and tears that had no brine in them. Her marriage was to take place in a fortnight. Edgar, from family reasons, chose to precipitate the dénouement, and his young Bretonne fiancée had come up to town to make the few bridal preparations that he could not possibly make for her.
It happened unluckily to be Berthe’s day, so the usual stream of visitors began soon to pour in, and broke up the tête-à-tête of the two friends.
The war was the topic of every tongue; but there was no mistaking for enthusiasm the animation with which it was discussed. Some indignantly repudiated and denounced the government, and protested that, so far from being a popular war, it was universally condemned as senseless, iniquitous, and ill-timed, and that there were not ten men in France who would cry Vive la guerre! unless they were paid for it. Others, who had been on the boulevards an hour ago, thought differently.
“There are madmen to be found in every city who are glad of an opportunity to bark, and bray, and howl, and demean themselves after the usual manner of madmen,” said the Austrian habitué, “and Paris can muster as good a roll of lunatics on as short notice as any city in Europe; but I don’t believe there were ten sane men on the boulevards this morning who cried Vive la guerre!”
“I can assure you,” said Berthe, “I saw hundreds of comme-il-faut-looking men, to all appearance in their right mind, who were crying it frantically; so much so that I got quite carried away, and actually shook my handkerchief, and shouted with the rest of them.”