“Lâ, lâ, voyons!” broke in Mme. Cléry, putting her head in at the door, and shaking the lid of a sauce-pan at the invalid. “How is the tisane to take effect if you will talk politics and put yourself into a rage about la situation! Mme. la Générale, make 'um keep still!”
The générale thus adjured laid down the newspaper, and gently insisted on M. Dalibouze's resuming his horizontal position on the couch. Aline was not there; she was off at her old work at the Ambulance again. The hospitals had been replenished [pg 239] to overflowing by the street-fighting of the last week of the Commune, la dénouement de la situation, as M. Dalibouze called it, and nurses were in great demand. Citoyen Varlay had not turned up since the night they had lost him in the crowd. The excitement and confusion which had reigned in the city ever since had made it difficult to set effective inquiries on foot, even if the sisters had been accurately informed regarding their quondam guest's identity and circumstances, which they were not. All they knew of him was his appearance, his name, and his wound. This was too vague to assist much in the search. Mme. de Chanoir was sincerely sorry for it; she had been attracted at once by the frank bearing and courteous manners of the young citoyen; but his cool courage, his forgetfulness of himself for others, and the stoical contempt for bodily pain which he had displayed on the occasion of their flight, had kindled sympathy into admiration, and she spoke of him now as a hero. She spoke of him constantly at first, loudly lamenting his loss; for lost she believed him. He had, no doubt, been overpowered by the crowd; his disabled arm deprived him of half his strength, and, exhausted as he was by previous pain, and the violent effort to protect Aline in the struggle, he had probably fainted and been suffocated or crushed to death. This was the conclusion Mme. de Chanoir arrived at; but when she mentioned it to Aline, the deadly paleness that suddenly overspread the young girl's features made her wish to recall her words, and from that out the name of the young soldier was never pronounced between the sisters.
Mme. Cléry had formed on her side an enthusiastic affection for him, and sincerely regretted his fate, but with a woman's instinct she guessed that the one who regretted it most said least about it. She never mentioned citoyen Varlay to Aline, but made up for the self-denial by pouring out his praises and her own grief into the sympathizing ear of the générale.
“What a pretty couple they would have made!” said the old woman one morning, wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron; “he was such a fine fellow, and so merry; he only wanted the particule to make him perfect; but, after all, who knows? He may not have been as good as he looked. One can never trust those parvenus.”
A month passed. Mme. de Chanoir was alone one afternoon, when Mme. Cléry rushed into the room in a state of breathless excitement, her eyes literally dancing out of her head.
“Madame! madame! I guessed it! I was sure of it! I'm not that woman not to know a gentleman when I see him. I told madame he was! Let madame never say but I did!”
And having explained herself thus coherently between laughing and crying, she held out a card to her mistress.
Mme. de Chanoir read aloud:
Le Baron de Varlay,
Avocat à la Cour de Cassation.