CHAPTER IV

The Prefect and the General enjoyed their breakfast thoroughly. They sat over it long; so long that Angelot, his hunger satisfied, began to suffer in his young limbs from a terrible restlessness. It was as much as he could do to sit still, listening first to the Prefect's political and society talk, then to stories of the General's campaigns. Under the influence of the despised wine of Anjou, Monsieur de Mauves, whose temper needed no sweetening, became a little sleepy, prosy, and long-winded. General Ratoneau on his side was mightily cheered, and showed quite a new animation: long before the meal ended, he was talking more than the other three put together. It was he who had been the hero of Eylau, of Friedland, of Wagram; the Emperor and the Marshals were nowhere. All the great movements were in consequence of his advice. And then his personal courage! The men he had killed with his own hand! As to the adventures which had fallen to his lot in storming and plundering towns, burning villages, quartering his men on country houses, these often belonged so much to the very seamiest side of war that Monsieur Joseph, soldier as he was, listened with a frown, and the Prefect coughed and glanced more than once at Angelot. For some of these stories were hardly suited to young and innocent ears, and Angelot looked, and indeed was, younger than his age.

He was listening, not curiously, but with a kind of unwilling impatience. The man seemed to impress him in spite of himself, in spite of disgust at the stories and dislike of the teller. Once or twice he laughed, and then General Ratoneau gave him a stare, as if just reminded of his existence, and went on to some further piece of coarse bragging.

Monsieur Joseph became paler and graver, Angelot more restless, the Prefect sleepier, as the rough voice talked on. Angelot thought breakfast would never be over, and that this brute would never have done boasting of his fine deeds, such as hanging up six brothers in a row outside their own house, and threatening the mother and sisters with the same fate unless they showed him the way to the cellar, where he knew they had hidden plate and jewellery, as well as a quantity of good wine.

"You would not have done it, monsieur?" said Angelot, quickly.

The General assured him with oaths that he certainly would.

"And they knew it, and did as they were told," he said. "We did not hurt them, as it happened. We stripped the house, and left them to bury their men, if they chose. What had they to expect? Fortune of war, my boy!"

Angelot shrugged his shoulders.

"You should send that nephew of yours to learn a few things in the army," the General said to Monsieur Joseph, when they at last rose and left the dining-room. "He will grow up nothing but an ignorant, womanish baby, if you keep him down here among your woods much longer."

"I am not his father," Monsieur Joseph answered with some dryness. "He is a friend of the Prefect's; you can easily remonstrate with him, Monsieur le Général. But you are mistaken about young Ange. He is neither a girl nor a baby, but a very gallant young fellow, still humane and innocent, of course—but your stories might pierce a thicker skin, I fancy."

The General laughed aloud, as they strolled out at the back of the house into the afternoon sunshine.

"Well, well, a soldier has the right to talk," he said. "I need not tell a man who knows the world, like you, that I should never have hanged those women—poor country rubbish though they were, and ugly too, I remember. But the men had tried to resist, and martial law must be obeyed."

Some reassurance of the same kind was given to Angelot by the Prefect, who lingered behind with him.

"And our conscripts go for this, monsieur!" Angelot said.

"My dear boy," said Monsieur de Mauves, lazily, "you must take these tales cum grano. For instance, if I know the Emperor, he would have shot the man who hanged those women. And our friend Ratoneau knew it."

Les Chouettes seemed stiller than ever, the sun hotter, the atmosphere more sleepy and peaceful. The dogs were lying in various directions at full length on the sand. The sleeping forms of the Prefect's gendarmes were also to be seen, stretched on the grass under the southern belt of fir trees. One moving figure came slowly into sight on the edge of the opposite wood, and strolled into the sunshine, stooping as she came to pick the pale purple crocuses of which the grass was full—little Henriette, a basket on her arm, her face shaded by a broad straw bonnet.

The General shaded his eyes with his hand, and stared at her.

"Who is that young girl, monsieur?" he asked.

The question itself seemed impertinent enough, but the insolence of the tone and the manner sent a quiver through Monsieur Joseph's nerves. His face twitched and his eyes flashed dangerously. At that moment he would have forgiven any rashness on the part of his Chouan friends; he would have liked to see Monsieur d'Ombré's pistol within a few inches of the General's head, and if it had gone off, so much the better. He wondered why he had not encouraged César d'Ombré's idea of making these men prisoners. Perhaps he was right, after all; the boldest policy might have been the best. Perhaps it was a splendid opportunity lost. Anyhow, the imperial officials would have been none the worse for cooling their heels and starving a little, the fate of the Royalists now. As to the consequences, Monsieur Joseph in his present mood might have made short work of them, had it not been for that young girl in the meadow.

"It is my daughter, Monsieur le Général."

A person with finer instincts could not have failed to notice the angry shortness of the reply. But the General was in high good humour, for him, and he coolly went on adding to his offences.

"Your daughter, is it! I did not know you were married. I understood from Monsieur le Préfet that you were a lonely hermit. Is there a Madame de la Marinière hidden away somewhere? and possibly a few more children? This house is a kind of beehive, I dare say—" he walked on to the grass, and turned to stare at the windows. "Was madame afraid to entertain us? My stories would have been too strong for her, perhaps? but I assure you, monsieur, I know how to behave to women!" and he laughed.

"I hope so, monsieur, especially as you are not now in Germany," said Monsieur Joseph, thinking very earnestly of his own sword and pistols, ready for use in his own room.

He need only step in at that window, a few yards off. A fierce word, a blow, would be a suitable beginning—and then—if only Riette were out of sight, and the Prefect would not interfere—there could not be a better ground than the sand here by the house. Must one wait for all the formalities of a duel, with the Prefect and Angelot to see fair play? However, he tried hard to restrain himself, at least for the moment.

"My wife is dead, monsieur, and I have but that one child," he said, forcing the words out with difficulty: it was a triumph of the wise and gentle Joseph over the fiery and passionate Joseph.

He thought of Urbain, when he wanted to conquer that side of himself; Urbain, who by counsel and influence had made it safe for him to live under the Empire, and who now, hating vulgarity and insolence as much as he did himself, would have pointed out that General Ratoneau's military brutality was not worth resenting; that there were greater things at stake than a momentary annoyance; that the man's tongue had been loosened, his lumbering spirit quickened, by draughts of sparkling wine of Anjou, and that his horrible curiosity carried no intentional insult with it. Indeed, as Monsieur Joseph perceived immediately, with a kind of wonder, the man fancied that he was making himself agreeable to his host.

"Ah, sapristi, I am sorry for you, monsieur, and for the young lady too," he said. "I am not married myself—but the loss of wife and mother must be a dreadful thing. Excuse a soldier's tongue, monsieur."

Monsieur Joseph accepted the apology with a quick movement of head and hand, being as placable as he was passionate. The General continued to stare at Henriette, who moved slowly, seeming to think of nothing, to see nothing, but the wild flowers and the crowd of flitting butterflies in the meadow.

During this little interlude, one of the gendarmes, who had seemed asleep, got up and moved towards the Prefect, who turned to speak to him, and after the first word walked with him a few yards, so as to be out of hearing of the others. Angelot, who had been standing beside the Prefect, glanced after them with a touch of anxiety. He did not like the looks of that gendarme, though he had not, like Marie Gigot, recognised him as specially dangerous. He walked forward a few steps and stood beside his uncle. Suppose the meeting of that morning, risky if not unlawful, were to come to the Prefect's knowledge; suppose his uncle's dangerous friends were ferreted out of their hiding-place in the wood; what then was he, his father's son, to do? His mother's son, though far enough from sharing her enthusiasms, had an answer ready: whatever it might cost, he must stand by the little uncle and Riette.

"Your daughter is still young,"—it was the General's hoarse voice—"too young yet to be reported to the Emperor. Monsieur le Préfet must wait three or four years. Then, when she is tall and pretty—"

Angelot's brow darkened. What was the creature saying?

"You were pleased to mean—" Monsieur Joseph was asking, with extreme civility.

"Ah, bah, have you heard nothing of the new order? Well, as I say, it will not affect you at present. But ask Monsieur le Préfet. He will explain. It is rather a sore subject with him, I believe, he has the prejudices of his class—of your class, I mean."

"You are talking in riddles, indeed, monsieur," said Monsieur Joseph.

They looked round at the Prefect. He had now finished his short talk with the gendarme, and as he turned towards the other group, Angelot's young eyes perceived a shadow on his kind face, a grave look of awakened interest. Angelot was also aware that he beckoned to him. As soon as he came up with him, the Prefect said, "That is mademoiselle your cousin, is it not, gathering flowers in the meadow? I should like to pay her my compliments, if she is coming this way."

"I will go and tell her so, Monsieur le Préfet," said Angelot.

"Do, my friend."

His eyes, anxious and thoughtful, followed the young man as he walked across towards the distant edge of the wood, whose dark shadows opened behind Riette and the crocuses. She looked up, startled, as her cousin came near, and for a moment seemed to think of disappearing into the wood; but a sign from him reassured her, and she came with a dancing step to meet him.

"I have been rousing curiosity, Monsieur le Préfet," said the General, smiling grimly, as the Prefect rejoined the other men. "I have been telling Monsieur de la Marinière that one of these days you will report his daughter to the Emperor."

The Prefect looked angry and annoyed. His handsome face flushed. With an involuntary movement he laid his hand on Monsieur Joseph's shoulder; their eyes met, and both men smiled.

"I sometimes think," said Monsieur de Mauves, "that His Majesty does not yet quite know France. His ideas have great spirit and originality, but they are not always very practical."

"They are generally put into practice," growled the General.

"Yes—but I do not think this one will go far. Certainly, it will have died out long before Mademoiselle de la Marinière is grown up."

"But explain, my dear friend!" cried Monsieur Joseph. "Is the Emperor going to raise a regiment of Amazons, to fight Russia? I am dying with curiosity."

"Some people would find your idea less disagreeable than the fact," said the Prefect, smiling, while the General shook with laughter.

"Amazons! ha! ha! capital! I should like to lead them."

It seemed that the Prefect, for once, was ashamed of his great master. He went on to explain, in a hurried fashion, how he and his brother Prefects had received this very singular command from the Emperor—that they were to send him, not a mere list, but a catalogue raisonné, of all the well-born girls in their several departments; their personal appearance, their disposition, their dowries, their prospects in the future; in short, every particular regarding them. And with what object? to arrange marriages between these young women of the best blood in France and his most favoured officers. It was one way, an original way, of making society loyal to the Empire; but the plan savoured too much of the treatment of a conquered country to please men like the Baron de Mauves. He might speak of it with a certain outward respect, as coming from the Emperor; and the presence of General Ratoneau was also a check upon his real sentiments; but he was not surprised at Monsieur Joseph's evident disgust, and not out of sympathy with it.

The reign of the soldier! They were heroes, perhaps, many of these men whom Napoleon delighted to honour. It was not unnatural that he should heap dukedoms and pensions and orders upon them. But it seemed a dangerous step forward, to force such men as this Ratoneau, for instance, into the best families of France. No doubt he, in spite of his Napoleonic looks, was a bad specimen; but Monsieur Joseph might be excused if he looked at him as he said: "My dear Baron, it is tyranny. I speak frankly, gentlemen; it is a step on the road to ruin. Our old families will not bear it. What have you done?"

"Nothing," said Monsieur de Mauves. "I think most of the Prefects agree with me; it is an order which will have to be repeated."

On which the General turned round with a grin, and quoted to him his own words—"Monsieur le Préfet—if you accept the new régime, you should accept it loyally."

"Pardon—nothing of this before the children, I beg," exclaimed Monsieur Joseph in haste, for Angelot and Henriette were coming across the meadow.

The Prefect's delicate brows went up; he shrugged his shoulders, and moved off with a somewhat absent air to meet the young people.

The sunshine, the flowery meadow, the motionless woods all about in the still afternoon: no background could be more peaceful. Nor could any unwelcome visitor with official power be more gentle and courteous than the Prefect as he took off his hat and bowed low to the slim child in her old clinging frock, who curtseyed with her hands full of crocuses and a covered basket on her arm. But little Riette and her cousin Angelot watched the amiable Prefect with anxious, suspicious eyes, and she took his kind words and compliments with an ease of reply which was not quite natural. She was a responsible person in her father's house at all times; but the fates of men had never, perhaps, been hung round her neck before. Why, the very fact of their concealment would be enough to condemn the four in government eyes looking out for conspiracies. And Monsieur des Barres, always lively, had said to Riette ten minutes ago: "Now, mademoiselle, you have sheltered us, you have fed us; we depend on you to keep all inconvenient persons out of the wood."

"Stay where you are till they are gone, and have no fear," the child answered, and went back to meet the enemy.

And presently the Prefect said, "You have gathered some very pretty flowers, mademoiselle."

"Pray take some, monsieur," said Riette.

The Prefect took two crocuses in his fingers, and cleverly slipped them into a buttonhole, for which they were not very well suited. Then he went on talking about flowers for a minute or two, but the subject was soon exhausted, for his knowledge lay among garden flowers, and Riette knew none but those that grew among her own woods and fields. Then suddenly and without warning, those pointed fingers of his had lifted the cover of the basket. It was done with a smile, as one might do it, a little mischievously, to a child trying to hide something, and with the words—"More flowers, mademoiselle?" At the bottom of the basket lay two corks and a small roll of bread. St. Elizabeth's miracle was not repeated for Henriette.

Angelot smiled and bit his lip; then looked at the faces of his two companions. In the Prefect's there was plainly a question. Riette flushed crimson; for a moment her dark eyes were cast down; then there was something both roguish and pathetic in them, as she looked up at the man on whom so much depended.

"Monsieur," said the sweet, childish voice, "I often eat my breakfast out-of-doors—I did to-day."

The Prefect smiled, but gravely. Angelot hardly thought that he was deceived.

"It is an agreeable thing to do, when one is young," the Prefect said. "Young, and with a clear conscience. But most people, if they had the choice, would prefer your father's hospitable dining-room."

He turned with a wave of his hand and walked towards the house.

"What have you done, child?" said Angelot, half laughing, half solemn.

"I did not tell a lie," said Riette. "Marie gave me something for myself too: she and papa both said I must not have breakfast with you. Oh, they were hungry, Angelot! They devoured what I took, especially the Baron d'Ombré. I am sorry there was a bit of bread left, and I don't know how the corks got there. But, my dear, he knows nothing!"

"Hush. I am not so sure. Now keep out of the way till they are gone."

This was a counsel of perfection, which Henriette did her best to follow; but it was difficult, for the time was long. All the household at Les Chouettes became very restless and impatient as the afternoon wore on, but none of them dared show it. Poor Monsieur Joseph summoned up all his powers of general conversation, which were a little rusty, to entertain the Prefect, who went on talking politics and society as if life, for him, had no more immediate and present interest. Angelot marched about with an uneasy sense of keeping guard; knowing, too, that his father was expecting him to help to receive the distinguished cousins at Lancilly. He did not mind that much; the idea of the Sainfoy family was not very attractive to him: he thought they might interfere with the old freedom of the country-side; and even to please his father he could not desert his little uncle in a difficulty. He poured out some of his irritation on the Prefect's pet gendarme, whom he caught stealing round by the wood where, hidden behind a pile of logs in an old stone hovel, the four Royalist gentlemen were finding this official visit considerably more than a joke.

"What are you doing on my uncle's land?" Angelot said sharply to the man.

"Nothing, monsieur. Is it not allowed to take a little exercise?" said Simon, the Chouan-catcher.

There was such a keen look in the man's eyes, such a veiled insolence in his tone, that Angelot suddenly felt he must say no more. He muttered something about disturbing the game, and passed on. Simon grinned as he looked after him.

All this time the General was fast asleep, stretched on a sofa in the salon. Angelot looked in upon him as he lay snoring. With his eyes shut, he was more like the Emperor than ever; and as with Napoleon, there was a sort of fascination in the brow, the chin, the shape of the head, though here there was coarseness instead of refinement, the power of will without the genius.

"He is a handsome beast, but I hate him!" the young man thought as he looked through the window. "Now if our excellent Chouans were here, what would they do? Probably nothing. And what can anybody do? Nothing. Fate has brought the Empire, as my father says, and he does not agree with Uncle Joseph that it does much more harm than good. For my part, I would as soon live in peace—and it does not please me to be ruled by overbearing soldiers and police spies. However, as long as they leave me my dog and gun and the freedom of the woods, they may have their politics to themselves for me.—Here I am, dear uncle."

He turned from the window with a shrug. Monsieur Joseph and the Prefect had been strolling about the meadow, and the Prefect now expressed a wish to walk round the woods, and to see the view of Lancilly from the high ground beyond them.

Angelot went with the two men. They walked right through the wood. The Prefect stopped and talked within twenty yards of the hovel where the four conspirators lay hidden. It was a grand opportunity for old Monsieur d'Ombré's pistol-shot; but not a movement, not a sound broke the stillness of the wood. There was only the rustling of the leaves, the squeak of the squirrels as they raced and scampered in the high branches of the oaks.

The two La Marinières stood on each side of Monsieur de Mauves: they were a guard to him, though he did not know it, as his eyes wandered curiously, searchingly, down the glade in which he chose to linger.

A rough whitewashed corner of the hovel, the mass of its dark roof, were actually visible beyond an undergrowth of briars.

"What have you there?" said the Prefect, so quietly that his companions did not even suspect him of a suspicion.

"A shelter—an old hovel where wood is stored for the winter," Monsieur Joseph answered truthfully; but his cheeks and eyes brightened a little, as if prepared for something more.

"Ah!" the Prefect only said, looking rather fixedly that way. "And where is this view of Lancilly?"

Both the uncle and nephew breathed more freely as they led him up the hill, through higher slopes of wood, then under some great branching oaks, here allowed to grow to their full size, and out into a rugged lane, winding on through wild hedges festooned with blackberries. Here, at the top, they looked straight across the valley to Lancilly, as it lay in the sunshine. Its high roofs flashing, it looked indeed the majestic centre of the country-side. Angelot gazed at it indifferently. Again the Prefect turned to him with his kind smile.

"It will be charming for you to have your cousins there. They will reconcile you to the powers that be."

Angelot answered: "I have no quarrel with the powers that be, monsieur, as long as you represent them. As to life, I want no change. Give me a gun and set me on a moor with my uncle. There we are!"

"If I thought your uncle was quite so easily satisfied!" the Prefect said, and his look, as he turned to Monsieur Joseph, was a little enigmatical.

CHAPTER V

When the last gendarme had passed from bright sunshine into shadows, when the tramp of the last horse had died away, Monsieur Joseph made a little joyful spring into the air and called, "Riette, my child, where are you?"

"Here I am, papa!" cried the girl, darting forward. "Ah, what a day we have had!"

"And what an evening we will have now!" said Monsieur Joseph.

He seized her two hands, and they danced round together. In the shadow behind the house Gigot and Marie followed their example, while Tobie, having no partner, jumped up and down with his arms akimbo. Mademoiselle Riette, catching sight of him, laughed so exhaustingly that she could dance no longer. Then the whole family laughed till the tears ran down their faces, while the dogs sat round and wagged their tails.

"The good God has protected us," said Gigot, coming forward to his master. "Does monsieur know that one of those gendarmes was Simon, the police agent, the Chouan-catcher, they call him? When I saw him, my heart died within me. But we were too clever for him. He went smelling about, but he found nothing."

"He smelt something, though," growled Tobie the groom. "He would have searched the stable and found the inner place if I had not stood in front of him: luckily I was the biggest man of the two. It is not so easy, do you see, to make a way past me."

"I gave them enough good food and wine to send them to sleep for the afternoon," said Marie the cook. "It was a sad waste, but the only way to keep such creatures quiet."

"What a terrible man, that General!" said Gigot. "How he slept and snored and kicked the sofa! you can see the marks of his boots now. And how he resembles the Emperor! I know, for I saw his Majesty once—"

"Stop your recollections, Gigot," said Monsieur Joseph; for Gigot, like many solemn and silent people, was difficult to check when once set talking. "We have something else to think of now. Make haste with dinner, Marie. We must console our poor friends for their captivity. Come, Riette, we will go and fetch them."

So that evening was a merry one at Les Chouettes, and the moon was high before the second batch of guests climbed slowly to the moor on their homeward way. The day's experience had not heightened their courage, somehow, or advanced their plans for a rising. Even the Comte d'Ombré agreed that the time was hardly ripe; that five or six men might throw away their own lives or liberties, but could not make a new revolution; that the peasants must be sounded, public opinion educated; and that the Prefect's courteous moderation was an odious quality which made everything more difficult.

And in the meanwhile, Monsieur de Mauves was justifying their conclusions in a way that would have startled them.

Beyond the wood, Angelot led the party across stubble-fields, where blue field flowers with grey dusty leaves clustered by the wayside, and distant poplars, pointing high into the evening air, showed where his home lay. Then they turned down into one of the hollow lanes of the country, its banks scooped out by winter rains and treading of cattle, so that it was almost like three sides of a cylinder, while the thick pollard oaks, leaning over it, made twilight even in the lingering sunshine.

The General was riding in front, the gendarmes some yards behind; Angelot, with his dog and gun, kept close beside the Prefect, who talked to him with his usual friendliness. Presently he said, "I love your uncle, Angelot, much better than he loves me, and I am sorry that he should run such useless risks."

"What risks, monsieur?" the young man said, glancing up quickly; and somehow it was difficult to meet the Prefect's eyes.

"Ah, you know very well. Believe me, your father is right, and your uncle is wrong. The old régime cannot be reëstablished. The path of France is marked out for her; a star has arisen to guide her, and she is foolish, suicidal, not to follow where it leads. I do not defend or admire the Emperor in everything: but see what he has done for France. She lay ruined, distracted. She took the mountain path of liberty, made a few wrong turns, and was dashed over the precipice. See how the Emperor has built her up into a great nation again; look at the laws and the civilisation; look at the military glory which has cost much blood, it is true, but has raised her so high in Europe that the nations who were ready to devour her are mostly crouching at her feet. Would our Bourbons have done all this for us, Angelot? Are they, after all, worth the devotion of men like your uncle and—for instance—Monsieur des Barres? Does not true patriotism lead a man to think of his country's good and glory, not of the advantage of one special family? Your uncle can hardly believe in that mediæval fiction of divine right, I suppose?"

Angelot smiled. "My uncle belongs to the days of Saint Louis," he said.

"But you do not," the Prefect replied. "I find it hard to forgive him. He is free, of course, to put his own neck in danger. One of these days he will drive me to extremities, and will find himself and his friends in a state prison—lucky if nothing worse happens. But he has no right to involve you in these treasonous tricks of his. It is selfish and immoral. Your father should see to it. You ought not to have been there to-day."

The Prefect spoke low and earnestly. It was impossible to misunderstand him. Angelot felt something like a cold shiver running over him. But he smiled and answered bravely.

"If my uncle has been foolish, so have I, and I will share the consequences with him. But as to to-day, monsieur?"

"I know all," the Prefect said. "Your uncle had visitors this morning, who were spirited away out of our sight. Their horses were hidden in an inner stable; they themselves in a hovel in the wood—and if they have waited there till we were gone, they must be tired of it. That famous breakfast we enjoyed was not prepared on such miraculously short notice. Your little cousin, poor child, was employed to carry food to the fugitives hidden in the wood. With all my heart I pity her; a life of political plots is not happiness. But if Monsieur de la Marinière does not hesitate to sacrifice his daughter, it is no wonder that he lightly runs his nephew into danger! You acted well, you and he. But I almost think it might have been safer to carry on that first breakfast-party, and not show its character by absurd attempts at concealment. You cannot contradict a word I have been saying, Angelot. I do not ask you to tell me the names of your uncle's guests."

"If you did, monsieur," the young fellow answered, "I should consider that an uncomfortable day had punished them enough, and so I should respectfully decline to answer you. I don't know how you made all these wonderful discoveries."

The Prefect looked at him and laughed. "You take it lightly!"

"I am speaking to a friend," Angelot said.

"That is all very well. Yes—too good a friend, I fear, from the point of view of duty. But I shall not repent, if you will be warned into prudence yourself, and will warn your uncle."

"I am rather afraid, monsieur, that my father has all the prudence of the family."

The Prefect would have argued further, but suddenly a sound like low thunder, still distant, echoed down the lane.

"What is that?" he said, looking round.

"Cattle, monsieur. Pull right into the bank and give them room to pass," said Angelot.

The gendarmes, who knew the country, had already taken this precaution. They were drawing up in single file by the side of the road, close under the steep bank, pressing into it, in the dark shadow of the pollards. But General Ratoneau, in advance, was riding stolidly forward, clanking along at a quick foot's pace in the very middle of the narrow lane, with all that swaggering air of a conqueror, which was better suited to German fields than to the quiet woody ways of France. Angelot hurried forward.

"Monsieur le Général!" he called out; but Ratoneau, though he must have heard, did not turn his head or take any notice.

"Insolent animal! I might as well leave him to fight it out with the cows," the young fellow muttered; but for the Prefect's sake he ran on, his dog scampering after him, caught up the General, and stretched out a hand to his bridle.

"What the devil do you want!" said the General, lifting his whip.

"There is a herd of cows coming," Angelot shouted, though the blood rushed into his face at the man's involuntary movement. "You must get out of their way, or they will knock you down and trample on you. This is their way home. Draw up under the bank at once."

"I shall get out of nobody's way," roared the General. "But you had better get out of mine, little ape of a Chouan, or—"

The whip quivered in the air; another moment would have brought it down on Angelot's bare hand. He cried out, "Take care!" and in that moment snatched the whip and threw it over the horse's head. It fell into a mass of blackberry briars which made a red and green thicket under the bank just here. The lane turned slightly and was very narrow at this place, with a stony slope upwards. It was a little more than usual like the dry bed of a torrent. Only under the right-hand bank there was a yard of standing-room, where it was possible to draw aside while the crowd of horned beasts rushed past. The thunder of their hoofs was drawing near. The Prefect, fifty yards behind, called out advice to his angry colleague, which fell on deaf ears. Angelot was pelted with some choice specimens of a soldier's vocabulary, as he seized the bridle and tried to pull the horse to the side of the road. But the rider's violent resistance made this impossible. The horse plunged: the General, swearing furiously, did his best to throw Angelot down under its feet. For a minute the young fellow did his best to save the obstinate man in spite of himself, but then he was obliged to let the bridle go, and stepped to the shelter of the bank, while man and horse filled up the roadway with prancing and swearing.

"Give me back my whip, you—" the various epithets which followed were new to Angelot's country ears, but their tone made them serious.

Still, there was something so ridiculous in the General's fury that Angelot could scarcely help laughing in his face as he called out in answer, "When the cows are gone, monsieur, if you ask me civilly! I had to take it, or you would have struck me, and that was out of the question."

Even as he spoke, the cattle were coming. The lane was filled with a solid mass of padding feet, panting hides, low heads, and long fierce horns. An old bull of unfriendly aspect led the way, and one or two younger bulls came pushing and lowing among the quieter cows. Behind the large horned creatures came a few goats and sheep; then a dog, sharply barking, and a woman, shouting and flourishing her stick. But in this narrow space she had no control over the herd, which poured along like water in a stream's bed, irresistible, unresisted. They knew their own way home from pasture to the yards at La Marinière. This was their own road, worn hollow by no trampling but theirs and that of their ancestors. Anything or anybody they happened to meet always drew aside to let them pass, and they were not as a rule ill-tempered.

General Ratoneau thought he could ride through them, and spurred his restless horse, fresh from Monsieur Joseph's corn, straight at the wedged heads and shoulders of the advancing herd. The horse plunged, shied, tried to bolt; and there were a few moments of inextricable confusion. Angelot shouted to the woman in charge of the cows; she screamed to the dog, which dived among them, barking. Frightened, they scrambled and crushed together so that Angelot was pressed up by their broad sides against the bank, and only lifted himself out of their way by climbing to the trunk of a tree. The sun was setting; the dazzling light, in a sky all gold and red and purple, lay right across the lane: the General's uniform, his horse's smart trappings, flashed and swayed above the brown mass for a moment or two as it pushed down the slope. Then the horse fell, either slipping on a stone or pushed over by the cattle, but fortunately not under their feet. He and his master rolled over together into the briars on the farther side of the lane, and there lay struggling till the beasts had crowded by, hurrying on past the rest of the party, drawn prudently aside in the shelter of the bank.

As soon as they were gone, the Prefect and the gendarmes rode up to help Angelot, who had already pulled the General out of the briars, unhurt, except by scratches. The horse had at once struggled to its feet, and stood trembling in the road.

It was impossible for any one but the sufferer to take such an adventure seriously. Two of the gendarmes were convulsed with laughter; it was only Simon whose native cleverness and keen sense of his own advantage kept his face grave and sympathising, as he handed the General his hat and the other objects which his tumble had sent flying. The Prefect was smiling as he asked anxiously whether any bones were broken. Angelot trembled with hardly restrained laughter. It had seized him with an overpowering force, when he saw the General's fat figure rise in the air with a most undignified jerk, then being deposited in the thicket with a fine pair of riding boots and shining spurs uppermost. This was so exactly the accident that suited the man's swaggering airs of superiority, Angelot felt that he could almost forgive him his insolent words and looks, could almost bear the incomprehensible language of five minutes ago, the threatened stroke with the whip—ah, by the by, here lay the precious whip, with its silver handle, safely deposited in the bushes out of the cows' way. Angelot magnanimously picked it up and presented it to the General with a bow. He grunted a word meant for thanks, but the eyes that met Angelot's flashed with a dark fury that startled the careless boy and came back to his mind afterwards.

"Whose beasts were those?" the General asked hoarsely.

"They were my father's beasts, monsieur," Angelot answered. "They did not realize, unfortunately—" He broke off under a warning look from the Prefect, who went on with the sentence for him—"No one would regret such a tiresome accident more than your father, I am sure."

"I was going to say so," Angelot murmured softly. "Now if they had been my uncle's cattle—"

The General turned his back and mounted his horse. "The owner does not signify," he growled. "He cannot be punished. But it was either foolishness or malice that brought us along such a road."

"Come, come, General, that was my fault, after all!" the Prefect said pleasantly. "And you must acknowledge that our young friend did his best to save you. We all knew this country and its ways better than you did—it is a pity, but there is no more to be said."

The General seemed to be of the same opinion, for he rode off without a word. Angelot, looking after him, thought that one of these days there might be a good deal more to be said.

But now the Prefect was asking a last direction as to the road, and wishing Angelot good-night, for the sun was actually setting. His last words were: "Adieu, my friend! Be prudent—and make my best compliments to your parents. No doubt we shall meet soon at Lancilly."

"And perhaps without Monsieur le Général!" said Angelot, smiling.

"Possibly! We are not inseparable," the Prefect replied, and waved his hand kindly as he rode away.

"How was it that I did not strike that reptile? he tried to strike me," Angelot reflected as he walked down the quiet lane. "Well! the Prefect and my father would have been vexed, and he had his little punishment. Some day we shall meet independently, and then we shall see, Monsieur Ratoneau, we shall see! But what a somersault the creature made! If the bushes had not broken his fall, he would have been hurt, or killed, perhaps."

He laughed at the remembrance of the scene, and thought how he would describe it to his mother. Then he became grave, remembering all that had gone before. The Prefect was a friend, and a gentleman, neither of which the General could ever be. But it was a serious thought that the Prefect was at present by far the most dangerous person of the two. Uncle Joseph's life and liberty were in his hands, at his mercy. Angelot frowned and whistled as he strode along. How did the Prefect find out all that? Why, of course, those men of his were not mere gendarmes; they were police spies. Especially that one with the villanous face who was lurking round the woods!

"We are all in their hands; they are the devil's own regiment," Angelot said to himself. "How can Monsieur de Mauves bring himself to do such work among his old friends, in his old country! It is inconceivable."

Another rough lane brought Angelot into the rough road that led past the Manor of La Marinière to the church and village lying beneath it, and so on into the valley and across the bridge to Lancilly.

The home of his family was one of those large homesteads, half farm, half castle, which are entirely Angevin in character; and it had not yet crumbled down into picturesque decay. Its white walls, once capable of defence, covered a large space on the eastern slope of the valley; it was much shaded all about by oak, beech, and fir trees, and a tall row of poplars bordered the road between its gateway and the church spire.

The high white arch of the gateway, where a gate had once been, opened on a paved road crossing the lower end of a farmyard, and up to the right were lines of low buildings where the cows, General Ratoneau's enemies, were now being safely housed for the night, and a dove-cote tower, round which a few late pigeons were flapping. To the left another archway led into a square garden with lines of tall box hedges, where flowers and vegetables grew all together wildly, and straight on, through yet a third gate, Angelot came into a stone court in front of the house, white, tall, and very ancient, with a quaint porch opening straight upon its wide staircase, which seemed a continuation of the broad outside steps where Madame de la Marinière was now giving her chickens their evening meal.

In spite of the large cap and apron that smothered her, it was plain to see where Angelot got his singular beauty. His little mother, once upon a time, had been the loveliest girl in Brittany. Her small, fine, delicate features, clear dark skin, beautiful velvet eyes and cloud of dusky hair that curled naturally,—all this still remained, though youth and freshness and early happiness were gone. Her cheeks were thin, her eyes and mouth were sad, and yet there was hardly a grey hair in that soft mass which she covered and hid so puritanically. She had been married as almost a child, and was still under forty. Her family, very old but very poor, had married her to Urbain de la Marinière, quite without consulting any wishes of hers. He was well off and well connected, though his old name had never belonged exactly to the grande noblesse. The Pontvieux were too anxious to dispose of their daughter to consider his free opinions, which, after all, were the fashion in France before 1789, though never in Brittany. And probably Madame de la Marinière's life was saved by her marriage, for she was and remained just as ardently Catholic and Royalist as her relations who died one by one upon the scaffold.

She lived at La Marinière through the Revolution, in outward obedience to a husband whose opinions she detested, and most of whose actions she cordially disapproved, though it was impossible not to love him personally. Gratitude, too, there might very well have been; for Urbain's popularity had not only guarded his wife and son; it had enabled her to keep the old Curé of the village safe at La Marinière till some little liberty was restored to the Church and he was able to return to his post without danger. When madame used hard words of the Empire—and she was frank in her judgments—monsieur would point to the Curé with a smile. And the old man, come back from mass to breakfast at the manor, and resting in the chimney corner, would say, "Not so bad—not so bad!" rubbing his thin hands gently.

"Little mother!" Angelot said, and stepped up into the porch among the chickens.

His eyes, quick to read her face, saw a shadow on it, and he wondered who had done wrong, himself or his father.

"Enfin, te voilà!" said Madame de la Marinière. "Have you brought us any game? Ah, I am glad—" as he showed her his well-filled bag. "Your father came home two hours ago; he expected to find you here; he wanted you to do some service or other for these cousins."

"I am sorry," said Angelot. "I could not leave Uncle Joseph. I have a hundred things to tell you. Some rather serious, and some will make you die of laughing, as they did me."

"Mon Dieu! I should be glad to laugh," said his mother.

Angelot had taken the basket from her hand, and was throwing the chickens their last grain. She stood on the highest step, with a little sigh which might have been of fatigue or of disgust, and her eyes, as she gazed across the valley, were half angry, half melancholy. The sun had gone down behind the opposite hills, and the broad front of the Château de Lancilly, in full view of La Marinière, looked grey and cold against the woods, even in the warm twilight of that rosy evening.

"Strange, that it should be inhabited again!" Angelot had emptied the basket, and stood beside his mother; the chickens bustled and scrambled about the foot of the steps.

"Yes, and as I hear, by all the perfections," said Madame de la Marinière. "Hervé de Sainfoy is more friendly than ever—and well he may be—his wife is supremely pretty and agreeable, his younger girls are most amiable, and as for Hélène, nothing so enchantingly beautiful has ever set foot in Anjou. Take care, my poor Ange, I beseech you."

Angelot laughed. "Then I suppose my father's next duty will be to find a husband for her. I hear she is difficult—or her parents for her, perhaps."

"Who told you so?"

"Monsieur de Mauves."

"What? the Prefect?"

"Yes. He sent his respectful compliments to you. I have been spending the day at Les Chouettes with him and the new General. He—oh, mon Dieu, mon Dieu!"

Angelot burst into a violent fit of laughing, and leaned, almost helpless, against a pillar of the porch.

"Are you mad?" said his mother.

"Ah—" he struggled to say—"if only you had seen the cows—our cows—and the General in the air—oh!"

A faint smile dawned in the depths of her eyes. "You have certainly lost your senses," she said, and slipped her hand into his arm. "Come down into the garden: I like it in the twilight—and that pile of stones over there will not weigh upon our eyes; the trees hide it. Come, my Ange: tell me all your news, serious and laughable. I am glad you were helping your uncle; but I do not like you to be away all day."

"I could not help it, mother," Angelot said. "Yes; I have indeed a great deal to tell you."

They strolled down together into the garden, where the vivid after-glow flushed all the flowers with rose. His mother leaned upon his arm, and they paced along by the tall box hedges. The serious part of the story was long, and interested her far more than the General's comic adventure, at which Angelot could only make her smile, though the telling of it sent him off into another fit of laughter.

"Poor Monsieur de Mauves, to go about with such a strange animal!" she said. "As for you, my child, you grow more childish every day. When will you be a man? Now be serious, for I hear your father coming."

CHAPTER VI

He was glad, on the whole, that he had not organised any public reception. Hervé had decided against it, fearing some jarring notes which might prejudice his wife against the place and the country. As it was, she was fairly well pleased. A few old people in the village had come out of their doors to wave a welcome as the carriages passed; groups of children had thrown flowers; the servants, some sent on from Paris, others hired by Urbain in the neighbourhood, had stood in lines at the entrance. Urbain himself had met them at the door. The Sainfoys, very tired, of course, after their many hours of rough driving, were delighted to find themselves at last within the old walls, deserted twenty years ago. Only the son, now fighting in Spain, had been born at Lancilly; the three girls were children of emigration, of a foreign land.

The excellent Urbain had indeed some charitable work to pride himself upon. Even he himself hardly knew how it had all been managed: the keeping of the château and its archives, the recovery of alienated lands, so that the spending of money in repairing and beautifying was all that was needed to set Lancilly in its place again as one of the chief country houses of Anjou, a centre of society. Urbain had worked for his cousin all these twenty years, quietly and perseveringly. To look at his happy face now, it would seem that he had gained his heart's desire, and that his cousin's gratitude would suffice him for the rest of his life. His eyes were wet as he looked at his wife and said: "There was only one thing lacking—I knew it would be so. If only you and Joseph had gone with me to welcome them! I never felt so insignificant as when I went out alone from that doorway to help my cousins out of the coach. And I saw her look round—Adélaïde—she was surprised, I know, to find me alone."

"Did she ask for me—or for Joseph?" said Madame de la Marinière, in her dry little voice.

"Not at the moment—no—afterwards, of course. She has charming manners. And she looks so young. It is really hard to believe that she has a son of twenty-two. My dear old Hervé looks much older. His hair is grey. He has quite left off powder; nearly everybody has, I suppose. I wish you had been there! But you will go to-morrow, will you not?"

"Whenever you please," said Madame de la Marinière. "In my opinion, allow me to say, it was much better that I should not be there to-day. You had done everything; all the credit was yours. Madame de Sainfoy, tired and nervous, no doubt,—what could she have done with an unsympathetic old distant cousin, except wish heartily for her absence? No, no, I did not love Adélaïde twenty years ago. I thought her worldly and ambitious then—what should I think her now! I will be civil for your sake, of course,—but my dear Urbain, what have I to do with emigrants who have changed their flag, and have come back false to their old convictions? No—my place is not at Lancilly. Nor is Joseph's—and I hardly believe we should be welcome there."

"My dear, all this is politics!" cried Monsieur Urbain, flourishing his hands in the air. "It is agreed, it is our convention, yours and mine, that we never mention politics. It must be the same between you and our cousins. What does it matter, after all? You live under the Empire, you obey the laws as much as they do. Why should any of us spoil society by waving our private opinions. It is not philosophical, really it is not."

"I did not suppose it was," she said. "I leave philosophy to you, my dear friend."

She shrugged her shoulders and looked at Angelot, who was sitting in silence, watching his father with the rather puzzled and qualified admiration that he usually felt for him. This admiration was not unmixed with fear, for Urbain, so sweet and so clever, could be very stern; it was an iron will that had carried him through the past twenty years. Or rather, perhaps, a will of the finest steel, a character that had a marvellous faculty for bending without being broken.

"And you—" said Monsieur Urbain to his son—"you had a long day's sport with the uncle. Did you get a good bag?"

Angelot told him. "But that was only by myself till breakfast time," he said. "Since then I have been helping my uncle in other ways. I am afraid you wanted me, monsieur, but it was an important matter, and I could not leave him."

"Ah! Well, the other was not a very important matter—at least, I found another messenger who did as well. It was to ride to Sonnay, to tell the coiffeur there to come to Lancilly early to-morrow. Madame de Sainfoy's favourite maid was ill, and stayed behind in Paris. No one else can dress her hair. It was she herself who remembered the old hairdresser at Sonnay, a true artist of the old kind. I had a strong impression that he—well, that he died unfortunately in those unhappy days—you understand—but she thought he had even then a son growing up to succeed him, and it seemed worth while to send to enquire."

Angelot smiled; his mother frowned. "I am glad you were not here!" she murmured under her breath.

Later on they were sitting in the curious, gloomy old room which did duty for salon and library at La Marinière. Nothing here of the simple, cheerful, though old-time grace of Les Chouettes. Louis Quatorze chairs, with old worked seats, stood in a solemn row on the smooth stone floor; the walls were hung with ancient tapestry, utterly out of date and out of fashion now. A large bookcase rose from the floor to the dark painted beams of the ceiling, at one end of the room. It contained many books which Madame de la Marinière would gladly have burnt on the broad hearth, under her beautiful white stone chimney-piece—itself out of date, old and monstrous in the eyes of the Empire. But Madame de la Marinière was obliged to live with her husband's literary admirations, as well as with his political opinions, so Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Helvétius, with many earlier and healthier geniuses, such as Montaigne, looked down in handsomely gilt bindings from the upper shelves. High up they were: there was a concession. In the lower shelves lived Bousset, and other Catholic writers; the modern spirit in religion being represented by Chateaubriand's five volumes of Le Géne du Christianisme and two volumes of Les Martyrs. Corneille and Racine, among poets, had the honour of accessibility. When Monsieur Urbain wanted one of his own books, he had to fetch a little ladder from a cupboard in the hall. Angelot, from a child, was forbidden to use that ladder. The prohibition was hardly necessary. Angelot seldom opened a book at all, or read for more than five minutes at a time. He followed his uncle in this, as in so much else. The moors, the woods, the riverside, were monsieur Joseph's library: as to literal books, he had none but a few volumes on sport and on military history.

In this old room Madame de la Marinière would sit all the evening long, working at her tapestry frame; Urbain would read, sometimes aloud; Angelot would draw, or make flies and fishing tackle. On this special evening the little lady sat down to her frame—she was making new seats in cross-stitch for the old chairs against the wall. Two candles, which lighted the room very dimly, and a tall glass full of late roses, stood on a solid oak table close to her chair.

She made a charming picture as she sat there, seemingly absorbed in her work, yet glancing up every instant to listen to the talk of the two men. Angelot was giving his father an account of the day's adventures, and Monsieur Urbain was as much annoyed as his easy-going temper would allow.

"Is he not mad and bad, that brother of mine!" he cried. "But what was it all about? What were they plotting and planning, these foolish men? Why could he not have two more places laid at table and entertain the whole party together? That would have been the clever thing to do. The Prefect has nothing special against any of those gentlemen—or had not, before this. What were they plotting, Angelot?"

Angelot knew nothing about that. He thought their consciences were bad, from the readiness with which they scuttled off into the woods. And from things they said as they went, he thought they and the imperial officers were best apart. The Messieurs d'Ombré especially, from their talk, would have been dangerous companions at table. Pistols, prisons, a general insurrection and so forth.

"My poor brother will be punished enough," said Urbain, "if he has to spend his time in Purgatory with these d'Ombrés."

He glanced at his wife, who did not like such allusions as this; but she bent over her frame and said nothing.

"Go on, tell me all," he said to his son.

Angelot told him the whole story. He was an emotional person, with a strong sense of humour. The Prefect's generosity brought tears into his eyes; the General's adventure made him laugh heartily, but he was soon grave again.

"I have not seen General Ratoneau," he said. "But I have heard that he is a very revengeful man, and I am sorry you should have offended him, my boy."

"He offended me!" said Angelot, laughing. "I tried to save him; he swore at me and would not be saved. Then he tried to strike me and I would not be struck. And it was I who pulled him out of the bushes, and a clumsy lump he was, too. I assure you, father, the debt is on his side, not mine. One of these days he shall pay it, if I live."

"Nonsense! forget all about it as soon as you can," said his father. "As to his language, that was natural to a soldier. Another time, leave a soldier to fight his own battles, even with a herd of cows. To run between a soldier and his enemy is like interfering between husband and wife, or putting your hand between the bark and the tree. Never do it again."

"You do not practise what you preach," said Madame de la Marinière, while Angelot looked a little crestfallen. "I wonder who has run between more adversaries than yourself, in the last few years!"

"My dear friend, I never yet differed with an imperial officer, or presumed to know better than my superiors, even on Angevin country subjects," said her husband, smiling.

"Ah!" she sighed. Her brows wrinkled up a little, and there was a touch of scorn in the pretty lines of her mouth. "Ah! Ange and I will never reach your philosopher's level," she said.

"I wish—I wish—" Monsieur Urbain muttered, pacing up and down, "that Joseph would grow a little wiser as he grows older. The Prefect is excellent—if it were only the Prefect—but the fellows who were with him—yes, it would be disagreeable to feel that there was a string round Joseph's neck and that the police held the end of it. A secret meeting to-day—at Joseph's house—and Joseph's and Angelot's the only names known!"

"Ange was not at the meeting!" cried Madame de la Marinière.

"I know—but who will believe that?"

Angelot was a little impressed. He had very seldom seen his father, so hopeful, so even-tempered, with a cloud of anxiety on his face. The very rarity of such uneasiness made it catching. A sort of apprehensive chill seemed to creep from the corners of the dark old room, steal along by the shuttered windows, hover about the gaping cavern of the hearth. It became an air, breathing through the room in the motionless September night, so that the candle-flames on madame's table bent and flickered suddenly.

Then the dogs out in the yard began to bark.

"They are barking at the moon," said Monsieur Urbain. "No, at somebody passing by."

"Somebody is coming in, father," said Angelot, "I hear footsteps in the court—they are on the steps—in the porch. Shall I see who it is?"

"Do, my boy."

The mother turned pale, half rose, as if to stop him. "Not the police!" were the words on her lips; but her husband's calmness reassured her.

Angelot went out into the hall, and reached the house-door just as somebody outside began to knock upon it. He opened it, and saw two figures standing in the half-darkness: for the moon was not yet very high, and while she bathed all the valley in golden light, making Lancilly's walls and windows shine with a fairy beauty, the house at La Marinière still cast a broad shadow. The figures were of a man and a woman, strangers to Angelot; he, standing in the dark doorway, was equally strange to them and only dimly visible. The stranger lifted his hand courteously to his hat, and there was a touch of hesitation in his very musical voice, as if—which was the fact—he did not know to whom he was speaking.

"Madame de la Marinière is at home? She receives this evening?"

"Certainly, monsieur," said Angelot. "One moment, and I will fetch a light—madame—" and he bowed low to the stranger's companion.

"What? Are you Angelot? Shake hands: there is light enough for that," said the visitor with sudden friendliness. "Let me present you to my daughter Hélène—your cousin, in fact."

The slender, silent girl who stood by Monsieur de Sainfoy might have been pretty or ugly—there was no light to show—but Angelot seemed to know by instinct at once all that he was to discover afterwards. He bowed again, and kissed Hélène's glove, and felt a most unreasonable dizziness, a wildfire rushing through his young veins; all this for the first time in his boyish life and from no greater apparent cause than the sweetness of her voice when she said, "Bonjour, mon cousin!"

Then, before he could turn round, his father was there, carrying one of the heavy candlesticks, and all the porch was full of light and of cheerful voices.

"I am triumphant," cried the Comte de Sainfoy. "My wife said I could not find my way. I felt sure I had not forgotten boyish days so completely, and Hélène was ready to trust herself to me, and glad to wait upon madame her cousin."

"She is most welcome—you are both most welcome," the beaming master of the house assured him. "Come in, dear neighbours, I beg. What happiness! What an end to all this weary time! If a few things in life were different, I could say I had nothing left to wish for."

"A few things? Can we supply them, dear Urbain?" said the Comte, affectionately.

"No, Hervé, no. They do not concern you, my beloved friend. On your side all is perfection. But alas! you are not everybody, or everywhere. Never mind! This is a joy, an honour, indeed, to make one forget one's troubles."

Angelot had taken the candlestick from his father as they crossed the hall. He carried it in before the party and set it down in its place, then stepped back into the shadow while Monsieur Urbain brought them in, and his mother, still pale, and a little shy or stiff in manner, went forward to receive them.

"After twenty years!" The Comte de Sainfoy bowed low over the small hand that lay in his, thin, delicate, if not so white and soft as a court lady's hand. His lips touched it lightly; he straightened himself, and looked smiling into her face. He had always admired Anne de Pontvieux. He might himself have thought of marrying her, in those last days of old France, from which so great a gulf now parted them, if her family had been richer and more before the world. As a young man, he had been surprised at Urbain's good fortune, and slightly envious of it.

"Utterly unchanged, belle cousine!" he said. "What does he mean, that discontented man, by finding his lot anything short of perfection! Here you have lived, you and he, in that quietest place that exists in the very heart of the storm. Both of you have kept your youth, your freshness, while as for me, wanderings and anxieties have turned me as grey as a badger."

"Your wife is still young and beautiful, I hear," said Madame de la Marinière. "And your hair, cousin, is the only thing that proves you more than twenty. At any rate, you have not lost a young man's genius for paying compliments."

"My compliments are simple truth, as they always were, even before I lived in more plain-spoken countries than this," said the Comte. "And now let me ask your kindness for this little eldest girl of mine—the eldest child that I have here—you know Georges is with the army."

"I know," said Madame de la Marinière.

Her look had softened, though it was still grave and a little distant. It was with a manner perfectly courteous, but not in the least affectionate, that she drew Hélène towards her and kissed her on the cheek. "She is more like you than her mother," she said. "I am charmed to make your acquaintance, my dear."

Words, words! Angelot knew his mother, and knew that whatever pretty speeches politeness might claim, she did not, and never could rejoice in the return of the cousins to Lancilly. But it amused and astonished him to notice the Comte's manner to his mother. Did it please her? he wondered. Gratitude to his father was right and necessary, but did she care for these airs of past and present devotion to herself, on the part of a man who had outraged all her notions of loyalty? It began to dawn on Angelot that he knew little of the world and its ways.

Standing in the background, he watched those four, and a more interesting five minutes he had never yet known. These were shadows become real: politics, family and national, turned into persons.

There stood his father beside the man to whose advantage he had devoted his life; whom he had loved as that kind of friend who sticks closer than a brother, almost with the adoration of a faithful dog, ever since the boys of the castle and of the old manor played together about the woods of La Marinière and Lancilly.

They were a contrast, those two. Urbain was short and broad, with quick eyes, a clever brow, a strong, good-tempered mouth and chin. He was ugly, and far from distinguished: Joseph had carried off the good looks and left the brains for him. Hervé de Sainfoy was tall, slight, elegant; his face was handsome, fair, and sleepy, the lower part weak and irresolute. A beard, if fashion had allowed it, would have become him well. His expression was amiable, his smile charming, with a shade of conscious superiority.

But Angelot understood, when he remembered it, the Prefect's remark that the Emperor found Monsieur de Sainfoy "a little half-hearted."

However, from that evening, Angelot ceased to think of Monsieur de Sainfoy as the unknown cousin, his father's friend, the master of Lancilly; he was Hélène's father, and thus to be, next to herself, the most important personage in poor Angelot's world. For it is not to be imagined that those few minutes, or even one of them, were spent in noting the contrast between the cousins, or in considering the Comte's manner to Madame de la Marinière, and hers to him. There in the light of the candles, curtseying to the unknown cousin with a simple reverence, accepting her kiss with a faint smile of pleasure, stood the loveliest woman that young Angelot had ever seen, ever dreamed of—if his dreams had been occupied with such matters at all! Hélène was taller than French women generally; taller than his mother, very nearly as tall as himself. She was like a lily, he thought; one of those white lilies that grew in the broad border under the box hedge, and with which his mother decked the Virgin's altar, not listening at all to the poor old Curé when he complained that the scent made his head ache. Hélène had thrown off the hooded cloak that covered her white gown; the lovely masses of fair hair seemed almost too heavy for her small, bent head.