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Prince or plebeian, Valmond played his part with equal aplomb at the simple home of Elise Malboir and at the Manoir Hilaire, where Madame Chalice received him. His dress had nothing of the bizarre on this occasion. He was in black-long coat, silk stockings, the collar of his waistcoat faced with white, his neckerchief white and full, his enamelled shoes adorned with silver buckles.
She tossed her head and struck straight home. "It isn't a game of pass it on from gentleman to beetle." "You think he's a gentleman?" he asked. "As sure as I think you're a beetle." He laughed, took off his cap, and patted himself on the head. "Parpon, Parpon!" said he, "if Jean Malboir could see you now, he'd put his foot on you and crush you dirty beetle!"
In a vague, far-off way he saw that it was Elise Malboir; but even as he saw, his eyes closed, the world dropped away, and he sank to sleep again. It was no vision or delirium; for Elise had come.
After a long pause, he said lingeringly: "To Mademoiselle Elise Malboir, the memory of whose devotion and solicitude gives me joy in my last hour, I bequeath fifty thousand francs. In the event of her death, this money shall revert to the parish of Pontiac, in whose graveyard I wish my body to lie.
"Here!" he answered emotionally, and he believed it was the truth. She stood looking meditatively out of the window, not at him. "In Pontiac?" she asked presently, turning with a child-like surprise. "Ah, yes, yes! I know one of the people; suitable for Pontiac; but is it wise? She is pretty but is it wise?" She was adroitly suggesting Elise Malboir, whose little romance she had discovered.
But Madame Chalice, sitting not far from Elise Malboir, had seen the resemblance in the Cure's garden on Friday evening; and though she had laughed at it, for, indeed, the matter seemed ludicrous enough at first, the impression had remained.
Beside the bellows, her sleeves rolled up, her glowing face cowled in her black hair, comely and strong, stood Elise Malboir, pushing a rod of steel into the sputtering coals. Over the anvil, with a small bar caught in a pair of tongs, hovered Madelinette Lajeunesse, beating, almost tenderly, the red-hot point of the steel.
As they filed past the house of Elise Malboir, the girl stood in the glow of a bonfire, beside the oven where Valmond had first seen her. All around her was the wide awe of night, enriched by the sweet perfume of a coming harvest. He doffed his hat to her, then to the Tricolor, which Lagroin had fastened on a tall staff before the house.
Then he added, with a suddenness which seemed to astound himself, for afterwards he looked round quickly, as if to see if he had been heard, "Elise Malboir h'm! a pretty name, Elise; but Malboir tush! it should be Malbarre; the difference between Lombardy cider and wine of the Empire."
He also had offered her a pinch of snuff, which she acknowledged by gravely offering a pinch of her own from a dirty twist of brown paper. One day he sprang over a fence, took from the hands of coquettish Elise Malboir an axe, and split the knot which she in vain had tried to break.
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