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If M'sieu' will have the amiability to await her in the salon, it will be for but a point of time!" Between this maid-servant and Monsieur Peloux no love was lost. Instinctively he was aware of, and resented, her views practically identical with those expressed by Madame Gauthier to Monsieur Fromagin touching his deserts as compared with the deserts of the Major Gontard.
Therefore, to the avoidance of that too radical conclusion, Madame Jolicoeur engaged in her debatings briskly: offering to herself, in effect, the balanced arguments advanced by Monsieur Fromagin in favour equally of Monsieur Peloux and of the Major Gontard; taking as her own, with moderating exceptions and emendations, the views of Madame Gauthier as to the meagreness and pallid baldness of the one and the sturdiness and gallant bearing of the other; considering, from the standpoint of her own personal knowledge in the premises, the Notary's disposition toward a secretive reticence that bordered upon severity, in contrast with the cordially frank and debonair temperament of the Major; and, at the back of all, keeping well in mind the fundamental truths that opportunity ever is evanescent and that time ever is on the wing.
With these substantial points in his favour, the standing of the Major Gontard in this matter practically is of a parity with the standing of Monsieur Peloux.
Knowing, as he did, Madame Jolicoeur's habitual disposition toward the convenances willingly to be boiled in oil rather than in the smallest particular to abrade them he perceived that only two explanations of the situation were possible: either she had lapsed of a sudden into madness; or the thought was petrifying the Major Gontard had won out in his French campaigning on his known conquering African lines.
Pas de Lanciers is the little station at which one changes trains in going from Marseille to Les Martigues. Descending from a first-class carriage, the Major Gontard awaited the Martigues train his leave was for two days, and his thoughts were engaged pleasantly with the breakfast that old Marthe would have ready for him and with plans for his flowers.
Acting on a just impulse, the Major Gontard sped to the telegraph office. Two hours must pass before he could follow the miscreant; but the departed train ran express to Marseille, and telegraphic heading-off was possible.
While thus perfunctorily engaged, he heard the clicking of an opening door, and then the sound of voices: of Madame Jolicoeur's voice, and of a man's voice which latter, coming nearer, he recognized beyond all doubting as the voice of the Major Gontard.
I insist, therefore, that should she accept his homages she would do well." "And I insist," declared Madame Gauthier stoutly, "that should she turn her back upon the Major Gontard she would do most ill!" "Madame a little disregards my premises," Monsieur Fromagin spoke in a tone of forbearance, "and therefore a little argues it is the privilege of her sex against the air.
Possessing these commendable characteristics, it follows that the doings of the Major Gontard in the railway station at Pas de Lanciers on the day sequent to the day on which Monsieur Peloux was the promoter of a criminal conspiracy could not have been other than they were. Equally does it follow that his doings produced the doings of the man with the bag.
Certainly, the Major Gontard had a bold way with him. But that it had its attractions, not to say its compellings, Madame Jolicoeur could not honestly deny. On the part of the Notary whose disposition, fostered by his profession, was toward subtlety rather than toward boldness Madame Jolicoeur's declaration of cat rights was received with no such belligerent blare of trumpets and beat of drums.
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