They shook hands, and Franceline turned back.
“Mind you give my compliments to the count!” said the vicar, calling after her. “Tell him I don’t dare go near him, as he is so busy; but if he likes me to drop in of an evening, let him send me word by you, and I’ll be delighted. By-by.”
He nodded to her and closed the gate behind him.
“He did not dare because he is so busy!” repeated Franceline as she walked on. “How did he know papa was busy? It was I who told him so a few minutes ago. That was an excuse.”
She gave the message, nevertheless, on coming home, scarcely daring to look at her father while she did so.
“May I tell him to come in one of these evenings, petit père?”
“No; I cannot be disturbed at present,” was the peremptory answer, and Franceline’s heart sank again.
She told him the gossip about Miss Bulpit and Mr. Tobes, thinking it would amuse him; he used to listen complacently to the little bits of gossip she brought in about their neighbors. Raymond had the charming faculty, common to great men and learned men, of being easily and innocently amused; but he seemed to have lost it of late. He listened to Franceline’s chatter to-day with an absent air, as if he hardly took it in; and before she had done, he made some irrelevant remark that proved he had not been attending to what she was saying. Then he had got into a way of repeating himself—of saying the same thing two or three times over at an interval of an hour or so, sometimes even less. Franceline attributed these things to the concentration of his thoughts on his work, and to his being so entirely absorbed in it as not to pay attention to anything that did not directly concern it. She was too inexperienced to see therein symptoms of a more alarming nature.
M. de la Bourbonais had all his life complained of being a bad sleeper; but Angélique, who suffered from the same infirmity, always declared that he only imagined he did not sleep; that she was tossing on her pillow, listening to him snoring, when he said he had been wide awake. The count, on his side, was sceptical about Angélique’s “white nights,” and privately confided to Franceline that he knew for a fact she was fast asleep often when she fancied in the morning she had been awake. Some people are very touchy at being doubted when they say they have not “closed an eye all night.” Angélique resented a doubt on her “white nights” bitterly, and Franceline, who from childhood had been the confidant of both parties, found an early exercise for tact and discretion in keeping the peace between them. The discrepancies in the two accounts of their respective vigils often gave rise to little tiffs between herself and Angélique, who would insist upon knowing what M. le Comte had said about her night; so that Franceline was compelled to aggravate her whether she would or not. She “knew her place” better than to have words with M. le Comte, but she had it out with Franceline. “Monsieur says he didn’t get to sleep till past two o’clock this morning, does he? Humph! I only wish I had slept half as well, I know. Pauvre, cher homme! He drops off the minute his head is on the pillow, and then dreams that he’s wide awake. That’s how it is. Why, this morning I was up and lighted my candle at ten minutes to two, and he was sleeping as sound as a wooden shoe! I heard him.” Franceline would soothe her by saying she quite believed her; but as she said the same thing to M. le Comte, and as Angélique generally overheard her saying so, this seeming credulity only aggravated her the more. Laterly Raymond had taken up a small celestial globe to his room, for the purpose, he said, of utilizing his long vigils by studying the face of the heavens during the clear, starry nights; and he would give the result of his nocturnal contemplations to Franceline at breakfast next morning—Angélique being either in the room pouring out the hot milk for her master’s coffee, or in the kitchen with the door ajar, so that she had the benefit of the conversation. The pantomimes that were performed at these times were a severe trial to Franceline’s gravity: Angélique would stand behind Raymond’s chair, holding up her hands aghast or stuffing her apron into her mouth, so as not to explode in disrespectful laughter. Sometimes she would shake her flaps at him with an air of despondency too deep for words, and then walk out of the room.
“I heard M. le Comte telling mam’selle that he saw the Three Kings (the popular name for Orion’s belt in French) shining so bright this morning at three o’clock. I believe you; he saw them in his sleep! I was up and walking about my room at that hour, and it so happened that I opened my door to let in the air just as the clock in the salon was striking three!”