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The wonderful success of their passage was emphasised the afternoon after their arrival at St. Laurent when a heavy gale struck the fleet, driving several ships into collision or ashore, and causing considerable loss in anchors and cables.
They were both up at four o'clock next morning to catch the mail to Calais, and Paul was able to leave Annette without severe misgiving. Laurent had promised to look after her, and the improvement in her own hopes appeared so manifest that he felt safe about her, except for those slight inevitable uneasinesses which occur at such a time. But he was only to be away for a month at the outside, and he had Laurent's assurance that he might make his mind easy. Annette herself rose to see Paul away, in spite of his remonstrances. She nestled by him whilst he stood to drink his coffee in the gray dawn of the morning, in the great, empty, echoing salle
Young girls were drawing water at the fountain; the flocks, the great dromedaries with their slow pace, the horses led by the halter, were moving to the watering trough; the hounds and the falcons enlivened the group of party-colored tents, and living voices and animated movement had succeeded to silence and desolation." Laurent, Memoires sur le Sahara, p. 85.
"Then," says I, "'tis myself that is mightily obliged to your ladyship, and am ready to put on her colours and do all in reason in her service, so as I am free to attend to Master Phelim, that is M. l'Abbe, whenever he needs me, that am in duty bound as his own foster-brother." "Ah, Laurent," says she, "'tis you that are the faithful domestic.
This flabby, livid countenance would have been a sight that others could not have borne, but Therese and Laurent experienced such need for company, that they gazed upon it with real joy. This face looked like that of a dead person in the centre of which two living eyes had been fixed. These eyes alone moved, rolling rapidly in their orbits.
There had been a kind of opéra comique in France for many years, a species of musical pantomime which was very popular at the fairs of St. Laurent and St. Gervais. This form of entertainment scarcely came within the province of art, but it served as a starting-point for the history of opéra comique, which was afterwards so brilliant. The success of the Italian company which performed the comic operas of Pergolesi, Jomelli, and others, fired the French composers to emulation, and in 1753 the first French opéra comique, in the strict sense of the word, 'Le Devin du Village, by the great Rousseau, was performed at the Académie de Musique. Musically the work is feeble and characterless, but the contrast which it offered to the stiff and serious works of the tragic composers made it popular. Whatever its faults may be, it is simple and natural, and its tender little melodies fell pleasantly upon ears too well accustomed to the pomposities of Rameau and his school. At first lovers of opéra comique in Paris had to subsist chiefly upon translations from the Italian; but in 1755 'Ninette
She had become yielding and timid, and starting from this point implored redemption with ardent humility. This attitude irritated Laurent, and every evening the quarrels of the couple became more afflicting and sinister. "Listen to me," said Therese to her husband, "we are very guilty. We must repent if we wish to enjoy tranquillity. Look at me. Since I have been weeping I am more peaceable.
'My dear young friend, said Laurent, 'no man until he is tempted knows in what direction his temptation lies. They shook hands again through the open window and then parted definitely for the night. Paul sat long in the silence, not thinking of anything in particular or conscious of any particular emotion. The café on the opposite side of the place had long since closed.
Believe me or not, as to that I am totally indifferent. I am doing what my sense of justice demands. That is sufficient for me. The night of the day you took passage on the Saint Laurent I called to the hôtel those whilom friends of yours and charged them on the pain of death to stop a further spread to your madness. Scarce a dozen in Rochelle know; Paris is wholly ignorant.
Perfectly silent, too, she was about her former life; but for all that, Michel, the quartee grocer at the corner, and Madame Laurent, who kept the rabbe shop opposite, had fixed it all up between them, of her sad history and past glories. Not that they knew; but then Michel must invent something when the neighbours came to him as their fountain-head of wisdom.
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