“Je vous remercie infiniment, mademoiselle,” said Bigourdin.
He went downstairs in a flutter of excitement. Not for four generations, so far as he was aware, had such an event occurred in the Hôtel des Grottes. Members of the family, of course, had stayed there without charge. Once, towards the end of the Second Empire, a Minister of the Interior had occupied the chambre d’honneur, and had gone away without paying his bill; but that remained a bad black debt in the books of the hotel. Never had a stranger been an honoured guest. He had offered the position, it is true, to Corinna; but then he was in love with Corinna, which makes all the difference. The French are not instinctively hospitable; when they are seized, however, by the impulse of hospitality, all that they have is yours, down to the last crust in the larder; but they are fully conscious of their own generosity, they feel the tremendousness of the spiritual wave. So Bigourdin, kindest-hearted of men, lumbered downstairs aglow with a sense of altruistic adventure. In the vestibule he met Félise who had lingered there in order to obtain from Martin a compte rendu of the household and the neighbourhood. Things had gone none too well—Monsieur Peyrian, one of their regular commercial travellers, having discovered a black-beetle in his bread, had gone to the Hôtel du Cygne. The baker had indignantly repudiated the black-beetle, his own black-beetles being apparently of an entirely different species. Another baker had been appointed, whose only defect was his inability to bake bread. The brave Madame Thuillier, who had been called in to superintend the factory, had quarrelled, after two days, with everybody, and had gone off in dudgeon because she did not eat at the patron’s table. Then they had lost two of their best hands, one a young married woman who was reluctantly compelled to add to the population of France, and the other a girl who was discharged for laying false information against the very respectable and much married Baptiste, saying that he had pinched her. The old Mère Maquoise, marchande de quatre saisons, who was reputed to have known Général Bigourdin, was dead, and one of the hotel omnibus horses had come down on its knees.
Félise, forgetful of the Maison de Blanc and Nôtre Dame, wrung her hands. She had descended from fairyland into life’s dear and important realities.
“It’s desolating, what you tell me,” she cried.
“And all because you went away and left us,” said Martin.
“She is not going to leave us again!” cried Bigourdin, swooping down on her and carrying her off.
In the prim little salon he hugged her again and said gripping her hands:
“It appears you have greatly suffered, my poor little Félise. But why didn’t you tell me from the first that you were unhappy with your Aunt Clothilde? I did not know she had turned into such a vieille pimbèche. She has written. And I have answered. Ah! I tell you, I have answered! You need never again have any fear of your Aunt Clothilde. I hope I am a Christian. But I hope too that I shall always differ from her in my ideas of Christianity. Mais tout ça est fini—bel et bien fini. We have to talk of ourselves. I have been a miserable man since you have been away, ma petite Félise. I tell you that in all frankness. Everything has been at sixes and sevens. I can’t do without my little ménagère. And you shall never marry anybody, even the President of the Republic, unless you want to. Foi de Bigourdin! Voilà!”
Félise cried a little. “Tu es trop bon pour moi, mon oncle.”
“Allons donc! I seem to have been an old bear. Yet, in truth, I am harmless as a sheep. But have confidence in me, and in my very dear friend, your father—there are many things you cannot understand—and things will arrange themselves quite happily. You love me just a little bit, don’t you?”