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Updated: July 6, 2025
"Encore une etoile qui file, File, file et disparait!" "Oh no, my dear friend," laughed Bakkus. "He can't persuade us, Lady Auriol, that he is afflicted with the morbidezza of 1830." "Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela?" asked Elodie, sharply. "It was a fashion long ago, my dear, for poets to assume the gaiety of a funeral. Even Beranger who wrote Le Roi d'Yvetot you know it "
On my table some letters awaited me; but instead of finding among them the apology from Bakkus which I had expected, I came across a telephone memorandum asking me to ring up Monsieur Patou at the Hotel Moderne, Vichy, as soon as I returned. After glancing through my correspondence, I descended to the bureau and there found Auriol in talk with the concierge.
Reason enough for a crise des nerfs. Even I, who had nothing to do with it, found my equilibrium disturbed. Lady Auriol and I dined together. She declared herself rested and in her right and prosaic mind. "I have no desire to lose your company," said I, "so I hope there's no more talk of an unbooked strapontin on the midnight train." "No need," she replied. "He's leaving Clermont-Ferrand tomorrow.
Now, perhaps you may wonder why I, not yet decrepit, did not glide ever so imperceptibly in love with Lady Auriol, who was no longer a dew-besprinkled bud of a girl and therefore beyond the pale of my sentimental inclinations. Well, just as she had avowed that she could not fall in love with a man of my type, so was it impossible for me to fall in love with a woman of hers.
He bred shorthorns and Berkshire pigs, which he disposed of profitably, and grew grapes and melons for Covent Garden, read the lessons in church and wrote letters to the Times about the war on which the late Guy Earl of Warwick would have rather prided himself when he took a fancy to make a King. "The dear old idiot," said Lady Auriol. "He belongs to the time of Nebuchadnezzar."
Needless to say that Lady Auriol had thrown all her curiosities, her illusions they were hydra-headed her enthusiasms and her splendid vitality into the war. She had organized and directed as Commandant a great hospital in the region of Boulogne.
Auriol, suddenly bethinking herself of plain chocolate, to the consumption of which she was addicted on the grounds of its hunger-satisfying qualities, although I guaranteed her a hearty midday meal on the occasion of the present adventure, we went down the street to the Marquise de Sevigne shop and bought some.
They hadn't broached the subject. They were afraid. I knew what Auriol was. As likely as not she would tell them to go to the devil for their impertinence. "And she wouldn't be far wrong," said I. "Of course it seems meddlesome," said Sir Julius, tugging at his white moustache, "but we're fond of Auriol.
It was the most unsatisfactory romance I had come across in a not inexperienced career. Was it the green silk tights or the possible woman in the background that restrained the gallant General? Suppose it was only the former? Would my Lady Auriol jib at them? She was a young woman with a majestic scorn for externals.
Bakkus," I answered rather stiffly, "that Madame Patou's unfortunate impressions are in some way justified." It was a most unpleasant conversation. I very much resented discussing Lady Auriol with Horatio Bakkus. "Not at all," said he. "But Fate has thrown you and me into analogous positions we are both elderly men me as between Lackaday and Madame Patou, you as between Lady Auriol and Lackaday."
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