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Updated: April 30, 2025
Sometimes nodding but never asleep, she had too much natural astuteness to be deceived a minute about Servigny's intentions, for she knew men by experience, and especially men of that set. So at the first words uttered by Yvette, she had cried almost in spite of herself: "Servigny, marry you? You are crazy!" How had he come to employ that old method, he, that sharp man of the world?
Without replying, with a quick movement, passionately, Servigny clasped her waist and they disappeared with the fury of a whirlwind.
But you two ought to have very interesting things to say to each other up there, above the heads of us all so, by-bye." And she left them quickly, going to the orchestra to make the musicians strike up a quadrille. Madame Obardi seemed preoccupied. In a soft voice she said to Servigny: "You are always teasing her. You will warp her character and bring out many bad traits."
Yvette had not taken her eyes off her mother's face, watching her thoughts and her surprise. She asked with a serious voice: "Why am I crazy? Why should not Monsieur de Servigny marry me?" The Marquise, embarrassed, stammered: "You are mistaken, it is not possible. You either did not hear or did not understand. Monsieur de Servigny is too rich for you, and too much of a Parisian to marry."
She made them buy ridiculous toys which they had to carry in their hands. The Prince and the Chevalier began to think the joke was being carried too far. Servigny and the drummers, alone, did not seem to be discouraged. They finally came to the end of the place. Then she gazed at her followers in a peculiar manner, with a shy and mischievous glance, and a strange fancy came to her mind.
The nightingales sang no longer; the frogs had finished their hubbub; some kind of an animal only, probably a bird, was making somewhere a kind of sawing sound, feeble, monotonous, and regular as a machine. Servigny, who had moments of poetry, and of philosophy too, suddenly remarked: "Now this girl completely puzzles me. In arithmetic, one and one make two.
Madame Obardi murmured: "But she must not stay like that," Then, at the suggestion of Servigny, they all gathered under the window, shouting in chorus: "Hip! hip! hurrah! Mam'zelle Yvette." Their clamor rose in the calm night, through the transparent air beneath the moon, over the sleeping country; and they heard it die away in the distance like the sound of a disappearing train.
She finally realized that she would not succeed, and not knowing what ruse to employ, she said to Servigny: "You know, my dear Duke, that I am going to keep you both this evening. To-morrow we shall breakfast at the Fournaise restaurant, at Chaton." He understood, smiled, and bowed: "I am at your orders, Marquise." The day wore on slowly and painfully under the threatenings of the storm.
The maid had come back bringing a druggist's bottle which Servigny opened and from which he poured out half upon a handkerchief. Then he applied it to Yvette's nose, causing her to choke. "Good, she breathes," said he. "It will be nothing." And he bathed her temples, cheeks, and neck with the pungent liquid.
Then he thought that perhaps she had gone home; and he went back very anxiously, this time by way of the bridge. A servant dozing on a chair was waiting in the hall. Servigny awakened him and asked: "Is it long since Mademoiselle Yvette came home? I left her at the foot of the place because I had a call to make." And the valet replied: "Oh! yes, Monsieur, Mademoiselle came in before ten o'clock."
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