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Updated: July 23, 2025
When it starts thundering and lightening in Royat, it goes on for hours. The surrounding mountains play an interminable game of which the thunderbolt is the football. They make an infernal noise about it, and the denser the deluge the more they exult. We were disguised in caps and burberrys, and Lady Auriol had procured a black veil from some shop in Royat.
She used to wait for him from morning till night with her eyes on the clock; she did not even look after the meals now, for he took all his away from home, Clermont, Chatel-Guyon, Royat, no matter where, as long as he was not obliged to come home.
She seemed to be hovering over that vast extent of country like a mournful ghost, and I asked him abruptly: "What has become of the husband?" My friend seemed rather surprised, but after a few moments' hesitation, he replied: "He is living at Royat, on an allowance that they made him, and is quite happy; he leads a very fast life."
When I made him my modest compliment he said: "Trick, my dear sir. Trick and laziness. I might have had the bel canto, if I had toiled interminably; but, thank God, I've managed to carry through on self-indulgent sloth." As he lived at Royat I saw much of him alone, Royat being such a wee place that if two sojourners venture simultaneously abroad they must of necessity meet.
Towards the end of our talk it entered the head of Madame Patou that she would do the same. I pointed out the anomaly of the interval between the two visits. But the head of a Marseillaise is an obstinate one. She dressed, put on her best hat there is much that is symbolical in a woman's best hat, as doubtless a man of the world like yourself has observed and took the tram with me to Royat.
She used to wait for him from morning till night, with her eyes on the clock; she did not even look after the meals now, for he took all his away from home, Clermont, Chatel-Guyon, Royat, no matter where, as long as he was not obliged to come home.
Having nothing to do, I took my Moniteur du Puy de Dome, which I had not read, to the cafe which commands a view of the park gates and the general going and coming of Royat. Presently, from the tram terminus I saw advancing the familiar gaunt figure of Lackaday. I was glad, I scarcely knew why, to note that he wore a grey soft felt instead of the awful straw hat.
"Madame," said I, "let me have the pleasure of driving you to Royat and offering you dejeuner." "My dear chap," said Andrew, "impossible. We play this afternoon. Twice a day, worse luck. We have all sorts of things to arrange." Elodie broke in. They had arranged everything already that morning. Their turn did not arrive till three-forty.
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