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When Mathieu and Marianne alighted from their cab on the Quai d'Orsay, in front of the Beauchenes' residence, they recognized the Seguins' brougham drawn up beside the foot pavement. And within it they perceived the two girls, Lucie and Andree, waiting mute and motionless in their light-colored dresses. Then, as they approached the door, they saw Valentine come out, in a very great hurry as usual.
Gaston showed himself only when he secured a few days' leave. And so Andree alone remained at home, impeding by her presence the great general pillage that Celeste dreamt of. The maid therefore became a most active worker on behalf of her young mistress's marriage. Andree, it should be said, was comprised in Ambroise's universal conquest.
The sailor paused to scan the sea something had struck him. He shook his head. Gaston was watching Andree from behind his book. "Well, well," she said, impatiently, "what then? What did he do?" "The king took up the woman, and rode into the water as far as where you see the great white stone it has been there ever since. There he had a fight not with the woman, but in his heart.
It was warm, very warm.... There!" "Oh Andrée, do tell me all about it.... It is so amusing...." "Here have a glass of Chartreuse, otherwise I shall empty the decanter myself. Well, I felt ill, on the road." "How?" "You are very stupid. I told him that I was not feeling well, and that he must lay me on the grass, and when I was lying there, I told him I was choking, and that he must unlace me.
Gaston, her brother, resembled his father; he was brutal in his ways, narrow-minded, supremely egotistical. Very different was the little girl Andree, whom La Catiche had suckled. She had become a pretty child so affectionate, docile, and gay, that she scarcely complained even of her brother's teasing, almost bullying ways.
There came other meetings when he reached the main avenue; first Gaston and Lucie, already tired of play, and dragging about their puny limbs under the careless supervision of Celeste, who was busy laughing with a grocer's man; while farther off La Catiche, superb and royal, decked out like the idol of venal motherhood, was giving little Andree an outing, with her long purple ribbons streaming victoriously in the sunshine.
"It was rough on you, Andree; but you were hard to please, and I am constant to but one. Yet, begad, you had solid virtues; and I wish, for your sake, I had been a different kind of fellow. Well, well, we'll meet again some time, and then we'll be good friends, no doubt." He turned away from the sketches and picked up some illustrated newspapers. In one was a portrait.
Rose, however, still merrily laughing, clung to her plan. "No, no, mamma, you must come as well; everybody must come; it was promised. Ambroise and Andree, you see, are like a royal couple from a neighboring kingdom. My brother Ambroise, having won the hand of a foreign princess, is going to present her to us.
"Why, do you imagine that Andree is well?" cried Seguin, giving way to one of his brutal fits. "That Catiche certainly set her right at first, but I don't know what happened afterwards, for now she is simply skin and bones." Then, as his wife wished to protest, he lost his temper. "Do you mean to say that I don't speak the truth?
"This is your native Brittany, Andree," he said. She pointed far over the sea: "Near that light at Penmark I was born." "Can you speak the Breton language?" "Far worse than you speak Parisian French." He laughed. "You are so little like these people!" She had vanity. That had been part of her life.
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