directly. “So be it, monsieur; you teach me how a child should be answered that forgets herself, and asks a favor of a stranger—a perfect stranger,” added she, maliciously.
Could one of the dog-days change to mid-winter in a second, it would hardly seem so cold and cross as Rose de Beaurepaire turned from the smiling, saucy fairy of the moment before. Edouard felt as it were a portcullis of ice come down between her and him. She courtesied and glided away. He bowed and stood frozen to the spot.
He felt so lonely and so bitter, he must go to Jacintha for comfort.
He took advantage of the ladies being with Dard, and marched boldly into the kitchen of Beaurepaire.
“Well, I never,” cried Jacintha. “But, after all, why not?”
He hurled himself on the kitchen table (clean as china), and told her it was all over. “She hates me now; but it is not my fault,” and so poured forth his tale, and feeling sure of sympathy, asked Jacintha whether it was not bitterly unjust of Rose to refuse him her own acquaintance, yet ask him to amuse that old fogy.
Jacintha stood with her great arms akimbo, taking it all in, and looking at him with a droll expression of satirical wonder.
“Now you listen to a parable,” said she. “Once there was a little boy madly in love with raspberry jam.”
“A thing I hate.”
“Don’t tell me! Who hates raspberry jam? He came to the store closet, where he knew there were jars of it, and—oh! misery—the door was locked. He kicked the door, and wept bitterly. His mamma came and said, ‘Here is the key,’ and gave him the key. And what did he do? Why, he fell to crying and roaring, and kicking the door. ‘I don’t wa-wa-wa-wa-nt the key-ey-ey. I wa-a-ant the jam—oh! oh! oh! oh!’ ” and Jacintha mimicked, after her fashion, the mingled grief and ire of infancy debarred its jam. Edouard wore a puzzled air, but it was only for a moment; the next he hid his face in his hands, and cried, “Fool!”
“I shall not contradict you,” said his Mentor.
“She was my best friend. Once acquainted with the doctor, I could visit at Beaurepaire.”
“Parbleu!”
“She had thought of a way to reconcile my wishes with this terrible etiquette that reigns here.”
“She thinks to more purpose than you do; that is clear.”
“Nothing is left now but to ask her pardon, and to consent; I am off.”
“No, you are not,” and Jacintha laid a grasp of iron on him. “Will you be quiet?—is not one blunder a day enough? If you go near her now, she will affront you, and order the doctor not to speak to you.”
“O Jacintha! your sex then are fiends of malice?”
“While it lasts. Luckily with us nothing lasts very long. Now you don’t go near her till you have taken advantage of her hint, and made the doctor’s acquaintance; that is easy done. He walks two hours on the east road every day, with his feet in the puddles and his head in the clouds. Them’s HIS two tastes.”
“But how am I to get him out of the clouds and the puddles?” inquired Riviere half peevishly.
“How?” asked Jacintha, with a dash of that contempt uneducated persons generally have for any one who does not know some little thing they happen to know themselves. “How? Why, with the nearest blackbeetle, to be sure.”
“A blackbeetle?”
“Black or brown; it matters little. Have her ready for use in your handkerchief: pull a long face: and says you—‘Excuse me, sir, I have THE MISFORTUNE not to know the Greek name of this merchandise here.’ Say that, and behold him launched. He will christen you the beast in Hebrew and Latin as well as Greek, and tell you her history down from the flood: next he will beg her of you, and out will come a cork and a pin, and behold the creature impaled. For that is how men love beetles. He has a thousand pinned down at home—beetles, butterflies, and so forth. When I go near the rubbish with my duster he trembles like an aspen. I pretend to be going to clean them, but it is only to see the face he makes, for even a domestic must laugh now and then—or die. But I never do clean them, for after all he is more stupid than wicked, poor man: I have not therefore the sad courage to make him wretched.”
“Let us return to our beetle—what will his tirades about its antiquity advance me?”
“Oh! one begins about a beetle, but one ends Heaven knows where.”
Riviere profited by this advice. He even improved on it. In due course he threw himself into Aubertin’s way. He stopped the doctor reverentially, and said he had heard he was an entomologist. WOULD he be kind enough to tell him what was this enormous chrysalis he had just found?
“The death’s head moth!” cried Aubertin with enthusiasm—“the death’s head moth! a great rarity in this district. Where found you this?” Riviere undertook to show him the place.
It was half a league distant. Coming and going he had time to make friends with Aubertin, and this was the easier that the old gentleman, who was a physiognomist as well as ologist, had seen goodness and sensibility in Edouard’s face. At the end of the walk he begged the doctor to accept the chrysalis. The doctor coquetted. “That would be a robbery. You take an interest in these things yourself—at least I hope so.”
The young rogue confessed modestly to the sentiment of entomology, but “the government worked him so hard as to leave him no hopes of shining in so high a science,” said he sorrowfully.
The doctor pitied him. “A young man of your attainments and tastes to be debarred from the everlasting secrets of nature, by the fleeting politics of the day.”
Riviere shrugged his shoulders. “Somebody must do the dirty work,” said he, chuckling inwardly.
The chrysalis went to Beaurepaire in the pocket of a grateful man, who that same evening told the whole party his conversation with young Riviere, on whom he pronounced high encomiums. Rose’s saucy eyes sparkled with fun: you might have lighted a candle at one and exploded a mine at the other; but not a syllable did she utter.
The doctor proved a key, and opened the enchanted castle. One fine day he presented his friend in the Pleasaunce to the baroness and her daughters.
They received him with perfect politeness. Thus introduced, and as he was not one to let the grass grow under his feet, he soon obtained a footing as friend of the family, which, being now advised by Josephine, he took care not to compromise by making love to Rose before the baroness. However, he insisted on placing his financial talent at their service. He surveyed and valued their lands, and soon discovered that all their farms were grossly underlet. Luckily most of the leases were run out. He prepared a new rent roll, and showed it Aubertin, now his fast friend. Aubertin at his request obtained a list of the mortgages, and Edouard drew a balance-sheet founded on sure data, and proved to the baroness that in able hands the said estate was now solvent.
This was a great comfort to the old lady: and she said to Aubertin, “Heaven has sent us a champion, a little republican—with the face of an angel.”
Descending to practice, Edouard actually put three of the farms into the market, and let them at an advance of twenty per cent on the expired leases. He brought these leases signed; and the baroness had scarcely done thanking him, when her other secret friend, Monsieur Perrin, was announced. Edouard exchanged civilities with him, and then retired to the Pleasaunce. There he found both sisters, who were all tenderness and gratitude to him. By this time he had learned to value Josephine: she was so lovely and so good, and such a true womanly friend to him. Even Rose could not resist her influence, and was obliged to be kind to him, when Josephine was by. But let Josephine go, and instead of her being more tender, as any other girl would, left alone with her lover, sauciness resumed its empire till sweet Josephine returned. Whereof cometh an example; for the said Josephine was summoned to a final conference with the baroness and Monsieur Perrin.