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"Oh!" said Sabine, who had already forgotten what she had just said, "don't wait all that time!" Her frankness delighted them both. Christophe went to the drawer that she had shut. "Let me look." She ran to prevent his doing so. "No, now please. I am sure I haven't any." "I bet you have." At once he found the button he wanted, and was triumphant. He wanted others.
The said M. the Cardinal got granted to the said company the islands of St Christophe, newly discovered and all the lands of Canada.
Smiling at his weakness, Christophe made him sit at the piano, and talked to him about music. He asked him many questions, and made him solve several little problems of harmony.
Diener was abashed. Christophe went on: "Is your business doing well? Have you many customers?" "Yes. Yes. Not bad, thank God!..." said Diener cautiously. Christophe darted a look of fury at him, and went on: "You know many people in the German colony?" "Yes." "Very well: speak for me. They must be musical. They have children. I will give them lessons." Diener was embarrassed at that.
Christophe looked down at the puny Olivier, in whose eyes there shone the light of faith, and he said: "Poor weakly little Frenchmen! You are stronger than we are." "O beneficent defeat," Olivier went on. "Blessed be that disaster! We will no more deny it! We are its children."
He was alone. Emmanuel was ill too, and could not come. Christophe did not call in a doctor. He did not think his condition was serious. Besides, he had no servant to go for a doctor. The housekeeper who came for two hours in the morning took no interest in him, and he dispensed with her services. He had a dozen times begged her not to touch any of his papers when she was dusting his room.
Only half awake, Christophe went to the door growling: he paid no attention to what the smiling, loquacious porter was saying about an article in the paper, but just took the letters without looking at them, pushed the door to without closing it, went to bed, and was soon fast asleep once more.
Some days before the morning of which we write, he had had, being alone with Christophe, a long conversation with him in which he endeavored to discover the secret reason of the young man's resistance. Christophe, who was not without ambition, betrayed his faith in the Prince de Conde.
And as they went on standing like that each thought the other must think him absurd. At last Christophe looked straight at the young man, and said with a smile, in a gruff voice: "You're not a Parisian?" In spite of his embarrassment the young man smiled at this unexpected question, and replied in the negative. His light voice, with its hint of a musical quality, was like some delicate instrument.
Christophe appreciated the acid freshness of such green frankness in contrast with the insipidity of the people who frequented the middle way, the via di mezzo, who are in perpetual fear of being compromised, and have a subtle talent for saying neither "Yes" nor "No." But very soon he came to see that such people also, with their calm, courteous minds, have their worth.
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