Mme.de Lorcy ran to Antoinette and embraced her several times, saying: "You are here at last! How charmed I am to see you again! You made us wait long enough; I began to fear that you had taken root in the Grisons.Is it indeed an enchanted land? I rather believe that your father is a cruel egotist, that he shamefully sacrificed you to his own convenience in prolonging his cure; but here you are--I will pardon him.Your poor, your /proteges/, are clamorous for you.Who do you think asked after you, the other day? Mlle.Galet, whom, according to your orders, I supplied with her quarter's allowance.How you spoil her! I found on her table a bouquet fit for a duchess; she insisted that you had sent it to her from where you were, and I had all the trouble in the world to make her understand that double camellias are not gathered among the glaciers of Roseg.Strew with flowers, if you will, Mlle.Galet's existence and garret; but do not fling at her head a bushel of double camellias, streaked with white; it is madness.Iseriously propose to have you put under restraint.Never mind, I am very happy to see you again.You are looking very well.--Don't you think, Camille, that she appears extremely well?"Mlle.Moriaz coldly received Mme.de Lorcy's embraces; but she smiled graciously on M.Langis, and pressed his hand affectionately.Mme.de Lorcy led them into her /salon/, where they talked on indifferent subjects.Antoinette was waiting for M.Langis's departure to broach the subject that she had at heart.At the end of twenty minutes, he rose, but immediately reseated himself.A door had just opened, giving admittance to Count Abel Larinski.
At the unexpected apparition of Samuel Brohl, the two women changed colour; the one flushed from the effort that she made to dissimulate her vexation, the other turned pale from emotion.Samuel Brohl crossed the /salon/ with deliberate step, without appearing to recognise the person who was with Mme.de Lorcy.Suddenly he trembled, as if he had been touched by a torpedo, and, profoundly agitated, almost lost countenance.Was he as much astonished as he seemed? For some time the Sannois Hill had become his favourite promenade, and he never went there without going as far as a certain spot whence he could see the front of a certain house, the window-shutters of which had remained during two months as though hermetically sealed.It might be that the evening before he had found them open.Induction is a scientific process with which Samuel Brohls are familiar.
He had abundant will and self-control.He was not long in recovering himself; he raised his head like one who feels himself strong enough to defy all dangers.After greeting Mme.de Lorcy, he drew near Antoinette, and asked how she was, in a grave, almost ceremonious tone.
"Your visit distresses me, my dear count," said Mme.de Lorcy to him;"I fear it is the last.Have you come to bid us farewell?""Alas! yes, madame," he replied."The letter for which I have been waiting has not yet arrived; but this delay will not alter my plans:
in three days I shall leave Paris."
"Without a desire to return, without regret?" she asked.
"I shall only regret Maisons, and the kind reception I have received there.Paris is too large; little people like myself feel their smallness more here than elsewhere; it does not require an excess of pride for one to dislike being reduced to the state of an atom.
Residing in Vienna suits me better; I breathe freer there; it is a city better adapted to my size and taste.Birds do wrong to change their nests."Thereupon, he began to describe and warmly extol the Prater and its fine walks, Schonbrunn, its botanical gardens and the Gloriette, the church of St.Stephen's, and the limpid waters of the Danube;sometimes addressing himself to Antoinette, who listened without a word, and sometimes to Mme.de Lorcy, whose eyes were turned at intervals towards M.Langis, seeming to say to him: "Was I not right?
Confess that your apprehensions lacked common-sense.Do you hear him?
he has only half an hour to spend with her, and he describes the Prater.Are you still thinking of cutting his throat? Please say one polite and civil word to him.It is not he, it is you who are gloomy.
Throw off your sinister air.How long will this taciturn reverie last in which you are sunk? You make yourself a laughing-stock--you act like a fool.You resemble a sphinx of the desert engaged in meditating upon a serpent, and who mistakes an innocent adder for a viper." M.
Langis understood what she wished to say to him, but he did not throw off his sinister air.
After praising Vienna and its environs, Samuel Brohl eulogized the easy, careless character of the Viennese.He told, in a sprightly way, several anecdotes.His gaiety was rather feverish--somewhat forced studied, and abrupt; but, nevertheless, it was gaiety.Mme.de Lorcy responded to him, Mlle.Moriaz continued silent; she crumpled between her fingers the guipure lace of her Marie-Antoinette fichu, and, with fixed eye, she seemed to be counting the stitches.Samuel Brohl interrupted himself in the midst of a sentence, and rose suddenly.He turned towards Antoinette; in a hollow voice he begged her to tell M.
Moriaz how much he regretted that his early departure would deprive him of the honour and pleasure of visiting him at Cormeilles; then he bowed to Mme.de Lorcy, thanked her for the happy moments that he had spent with her, and charged her to commend him to the kind remembrance of Abbe Miollens.
