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I could have laughed if it were not all so miserably stupid." He paused for want of breath and tried to peer through the window of the coach. "It is pitch-dark," he said, "but we can't be very far from the city now." "I don't see," rejoined Clyffurde, ostentatiously smothering a yawn, "what M. le préfet's visit to Brestalou had to do with the Duchesse's journey to the north.
"We'll go with you to the hotel," Brian promised. "They'll know there about the hospitals. And if the Préfet's still up, he'll phone for us officially, I'm sure." "It's you who are the practical one, after all!" cried O'Farrell. And I guessed from a sudden uprush of Irish accent that his anxiety had grown sincere.
He certainly has an influence over the girl, against which she struggles only at her strongest. To-day she looked pale and weak, and he could do what he liked with her. He liked to make her take tea at the Préfet's, doubtless because he'd have felt bound to escort the invalid to her room, had she insisted on going there! The story of the Wandering Jew would be a strange one, anywhere and anyhow.
I could have found out what these weird engines were, no doubt, but I preferred to remember them as mysterious monsters. At a great, strange church of St. Nicolas, in the old town of St. Nicolas-du-Port, we stopped, because the Préfet's daughters had told us of a magic stone in the pavement which gives good fortune to those who set foot on it.
I am sure he will come back; he has been through the street regularly for the last three days; but his hours vary. The first day he came by at six o'clock, the day before yesterday it was four, yesterday as early as three. I remember seeing him occasionally some time ago. He is some clerk in the Prefet's office who has moved to the Marais.
The Préfet's house is one of the eighteenth-century palaces of the Place Stanislas; and in the story I'd like to write, I should put a description of their drawing room, and the scene after dinner that night. Then into the midst of this breaking the tiresome whine of the siren. "What? A fourth time to-day?" cries somebody. "These creatures will wear out their welcome if they're not careful!"
"Then you would give up this fancy if Monsieur le Prefet required it of you? That, I think, would be the best proof you could give of the sincerity of what you say." "He is going it! he is going it!" thought Peyrade. "Ah! by all that's holy, the police to-day is a match for that of Monsieur Lenoir." "Give it up?" said he aloud. "I will wait till I have Monsieur le Prefet's orders.
Monsieur le Préfet offered himself to the Becketts as guide on a sightseeing expedition next day, and Madame, the Préfet's wife, proposed to exhibit her two thousand children, old and young, refugees housed in what once had been barracks. "The Germans pretend to believe they are barracks still, full of soldiers, as an excuse for bombs," she said. "But you shall see!
What with thinking of my own horridness and other people's, wondering about the shadow-man, and being roused by the usual early morning air raid, bed didn't mother me with its wonted calming influence. Excitement was a tonic for the next day, however; and a bath and coffee braced me for an expedition with the Préfet's wife and daughters, and the Becketts.
The Republican candidate had twenty, the Ministry got fifty, Albert had seventy, Monsieur de Chavoncourt obtained sixty-seven. But the Prefet's party had perfidiously made thirty of its most devoted adherents vote for Albert, so as to deceive the enemy.
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