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Her little lawyer's clerk of former days, now grown into a patriot dragoon and lady-killer, had quarrelled by now with his aristocratic mistress. Whenever he met Élodie in the street, he would gaze at her with a glance that seemed to say: "Come, my beauty! I feel sure I am going to forgive you for having betrayed you, and I am really quite ready to take you back into favour."
It was no fault of hers that she had no notion of his abhorrence of the scene. He smiled. "It is only you who could have dared," he said. "I told you last night they should applaud you." "And last night I told you you are always my mascot." "If it only weren't true that you love me no longer," said Elodie. The dresser entered. Elodie slipped out. Andrew made a step, after her to the threshold.
He had faced facts ever since the days of Ben Flint and Elodie was a fact, the principal fact in his life. Curious that she should have faded into comparative insignificance during the war especially during the last two years of it when he had not seen her. She seemed to have undergone a vehement resurrection. The shadow of the war had developed into the insistent flesh and blood of peace.
It was a relief to rise and fall into groups as we strolled down the terrace to coffee. I manoeuvred Elodie and Bakkus to the front leaving Auriol and Lackaday to follow. I sought a table at the far end, for coffee; but when I turned round, I discovered that the pair had descended by the mid-way flight of three or four steps to the grass-plotted and fountained terrace below. We sat down.
But knowing the man, knowing also Lady Auriol and having in the meantime made the acquaintance of Mademoiselle Elodie Figasso and Horatio Bakkus, playing, in fact, a minor role, say, that of Charles, his friend, in the little drama of his life, I eventually decided to carry out my good friend's wishes.
At least it expressed something human. And then the picture of that other room, so exquisite, so impregnated with the Far-away Princess spirit of its creator, rose up before him, and he sighed and rubbed his fingers through his red stubbly hair, and made a whimsical grimace, and said, "Oh Damn!" And Elodie then bursting in, with a proud "Isn't it pretty, ton petit chez-toi!"
"Naturally, 'Il etait un roi d'Yvetot!" cried Elodie, who had learned it at school. "Well of course. Even Beranger could not escape the malady of his generation. Do you remember" his swift glance embraced us all "Longfellow's criticism of European poets of that epoch, in his prose masterpiece, Hyperion?
He was buried in these thoughts when Élodie hurried up to him, pale-faced and distraught: "Évariste, what have you to say to me? Why not come to the Amour peintre to the blue chamber? Why have you made me come here?" "To bid you an eternal farewell." He had lost his wits, she faltered, she could not understand....
When it was quite dark, Jean Blaise proposed children's games in the farm kitchen. Élodie suggested the game of "hunt my heart," and this was agreed to unanimously. Under the girl's direction Philippe Desmahis traced in chalk, on different pieces of furniture, on doors and walls, seven hearts, that is to say one less than there were players, for old Brotteaux had obligingly joined the rest.
Well, good citizens must show double zeal and courage, must rouse the people from its apathy, bidding it choose between liberty and death. Such were Gamelin's thoughts, and the memory of Élodie was a spur to his confidence.
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