“Bon Dieu! my old friend, what do you expect?” replied Madame de Chantonnay to a rather incoherent statement made to her one May afternoon by the Marquis de Gemosac. “It is the month of May,” she further explained, indicating with a gesture of her dimpled hand the roses abloom all around them. For the Marquis had found her in a chair beneath the mulberry-tree in the old garden of that house near Gemosac which looks across the river toward the sea. “It is the month of May. One is young. Such things have happened since the world began. They will happen until it ends, Marquis. It happened in our own time, if I remember correctly.” And Madame de Chantonnay heaved a prodigious sigh, in memory of the days that were no more.
“Given a young man of enterprise and not bad looking, I allow. He has the grand air and his face is not without distinction. Given a young girl, fresh as a flower, young, innocent, not without feeling. Ah! I know, for I was like that myself. Place them in a garden, in the springtime. What will they talk of—politics? Ah—bah! Let them have long evenings together while their elders play chess or a hand at bezique. What game will they play? A much older game than chess or bezique, I fancy.”
“But the circumstances were so exceptional,” protested the Marquis, who had a pleased air, as if his anger were not without an antidote.
“Circumstances may be exceptional, my friend, but Love is a Rule. You allow him to stay six weeks in the chateau, seeing Juliette daily, and then you are surprised that one fine morning Monsieur de Bourbon comes to you and tells you brusquely, as you report it, that he wants to marry your daughter.”
“Yes,” admitted the Marquis. “He was what you may describe as brusque. It is the English way, perhaps, of treating such matters. Now, for myself I should have been warmer, I think. I should have allowed myself a little play, as it were. One says a few pretty things—is it not so? One suggests that the lady is an angel and oneself entirely unworthy of a happiness which is only to be compared with the happiness that is promised to us in the hereafter. It is an occasion upon which to be eloquent.”
“Not for the English,” corrected Madame de Chantonnay, holding up a hand to emphasise her opinion. “And you must remember, that although our friend is French, he has been brought up in that cold country—by a minister of their frozen religion, I understand. I, who speak to you, know what they are, for once I had an Englishman in love with me. It was in Paris, when Louis XVIII. was King. And did this Englishman tell me that he was heart-broken, I ask you? Never! On the contrary, he appeared to be of an indifference only to be compared with the indifference of a tree. He seemed to avoid me rather than seek my society. Once, he made believe to forget that he had been presented to me. A ruse—a mere ruse to conceal his passion. But I knew, I knew always.”
“And what was the poor man's fate? What was his name, Comtesse?”
“I forget, my friend. For the moment I have forgotten it. But tell me more about Monsieur de Bourbon and Juliette. He is passionately in love with her, of course; he is so miserable.”
The Marquis reflected for a few moments.
“Well,” he said, at last, “he may be so; he may be so, Comtesse.”
“And you—what did you say?”
The Marquis looked carefully round before replying. Then he leant forward with his forefinger raised delicately to the tip of his nose.
“I temporised, Comtesse,” he said, in a low voice. “I explained as gracefully as one could that it was too early to think of such a development—that I was taken by surprise.”
“Which could hardly have been true,” put in Madame de Chantonnay in an audible aside to the mulberry-tree, “for neither Guienne nor la Vendee will be taken by surprise.”
“I said, in other words—a good many words, the more the better, for one must be polite—'Secure your throne, Monsieur, and you shall marry Juliette.' But it is not a position into which one hurries the last of the house of Gemosac—to be the wife of an unsuccessful claimant, eh?”
Madame de Chantonnay approved in one gesture of her stout hand of these principles and of the Marquis de Gemosac's masterly demonstration of them.
“And Monsieur de Bourbon—did he accept these conditions?”
“He seemed to, Madame. He seemed content to do so,” replied the Marquis, tapping his snuff-box and avoiding the lady's eye.
“And Juliette?” inquired Madame, with a sidelong glance.
“Oh, Juliette is sensible,” replied the fond father. “My daughter is, I hope, sensible, Comtesse.”
“Give yourself no uneasiness, my old friend,” said Madame de Chantonnay, heartily. “She is charming.”
Madame sat back in her chair and fanned herself thoughtfully. It was the fashion of that day to carry a fan and wield it with grace and effect. To fan oneself did not mean that the heat was oppressive, any more than the use of incorrect English signifies to-day ill-breeding or a lack of education. Both are an indication of a laudable desire to be unmistakably in the movement of one's day.
Over her fan Madame cast a sidelong glance at the Marquis, whom she, like many of his friends, suspected of being much less simple and spontaneous than he appeared.
“Then they are not formally affianced?” she suggested.
“Mon Dieu! no. I clearly indicated that there were other things to be thought of at the present time. A very arduous task lies before him, but he is equal to it, I am certain. My conviction as to that grows as one knows him better.”
“But you are not prepared to allow the young people to force you to take a leap in the dark,” suggested Madame de Chantonnay. “And that poor Juliette must consume her soul in patience; but she is sensible, as you justly say. Yes, my dear Marquis, she is charming.”
They were thus engaged in facile talk when Albert de Chantonnay eme............