Villette

ONSIEUR’S FÊTE.

I was up the next morning an hour before daybreak, and finished my
guard, kneeling on the dormitory floor beside the centre stand, for the
benefit of such expiring glimmer as the night-lamp afforded in its last
watch.

All my materials—my whole stock of beads and silk—were used up before
the chain assumed the length and richness I wished; I had wrought it
double, as I knew, by the rule of contraries, that to, suit the
particular taste whose gratification was in view, an effective
appearance was quite indispensable. As a finish to the ornament, a
little gold clasp was needed; fortunately I possessed it in the
fastening of my sole necklace; I duly detached and re-attached it, then
coiled compactly the completed guard; and enclosed it in a small box I
had bought for its brilliancy, made of some tropic shell of the colour
called “nacarat,” and decked with a little coronal of sparkling blue
stones. Within the lid of the box, I carefully graved with my scissors’
point certain initials.

The reader will, perhaps, remember the description of Madame Beck’s
fête; nor will he have forgotten that at each anniversary, a handsome
present was subscribed for and offered by the school. The observance of
this day was a distinction accorded to none but Madame, and, in a
modified form, to her kinsman and counsellor, M. Emanuel. In the latter
case it was an honour spontaneously awarded, not plotted and contrived
beforehand, and offered an additional proof, amongst many others, of
the estimation in which—despite his partialities, prejudices, and
irritabilities—the professor of literature was held by his pupils. No
article of value was offered to him: he distinctly gave it to be
understood, that he would accept neither plate nor jewellery. Yet he
liked a slight tribute; the cost, the money-value, did not touch him: a
diamond ring, a gold snuff-box, presented, with pomp, would have
pleased him less than a flower, or a drawing, offered simply and with
sincere feelings. Such was his nature. He was a man, not wise in his
generation, yet could he claim a filial sympathy with “the dayspring on
high.”

M. Paul’s fête fell on the first of March and a Thursday. It proved a
fine sunny day; and being likewise the morning on which it was
customary to attend mass; being also otherwise distinguished by the
half-holiday which permitted the privilege of walking out, shopping, or
paying visits in the afternoon: these combined considerations induced a
general smartness and freshness of dress. Clean collars were in vogue;
the ordinary dingy woollen classe-dress was exchanged for something
lighter and clearer. Mademoiselle Zélie St. Pierre, on this particular
Thursday, even assumed a “robe de soie,” deemed in economical
Labassecour an article of hazardous splendour and luxury; nay, it was
remarked that she sent for a “coiffeur” to dress her hair that morning;
there were pupils acute enough to discover that she had bedewed her
handkerchief and her hands with a new and fashionable perfume. Poor
Zélie! It was much her wont to declare about this time, that she was
tired to death of a life of seclusion and labour; that she longed to
have the means and leisure for relaxation; to have some one to work for
her—a husband who would pay her debts (she was woefully encumbered with
debt), supply her wardrobe, and leave her at liberty, as she said, to
“goûter un peu les plaisirs.” It had long been rumoured, that her eye
was upon M. Emanuel. Monsieur Emanuel’s eye was certainly often upon
her. He would sit and watch her perseveringly for minutes together. I
have seen him give her a quarter-of-an-hour’s gaze, while the class was
silently composing, and he sat throned on his estrade, unoccupied.
Conscious always of this basilisk attention, she would writhe under it,
half-flattered, half-puzzled, and Monsieur would follow her sensations,
sometimes looking appallingly acute; for in some cases, he had the
terrible unerring penetration of instinct, and pierced in its
hiding-place the last lurking thought of the heart, and discerned under
florid veilings the bare; barren places of the spirit: yes, and its
perverted tendencies, and its hidden false curves—all that men and
women would not have known—the twisted spine, the malformed limb that
was born with them, and far worse, the stain or disfigurement they have
perhaps brought on themselves. No calamity so accursed but M. Emanuel
could pity and forgive, if it were acknowledged candidly; but where his
questioning eyes met dishonest denial—where his ruthless researches
found deceitful concealment—oh, then, he could be cruel, and I thought
wicked! he would exultantly snatch the screen from poor shrinking
wretches, passionately hurry them to the summit of the mount of
exposure, and there show them all naked, all false—poor living lies—the
spawn of that horrid Truth which cannot be looked on unveiled. He
thought he did justice; for my part I doubt whether man has a right to
do such justice on man: more than once in these his visitations, I have
felt compelled to give tears to his victims, and not spared ire and
keen reproach to himself. He deserved it; but it was difficult to shake
him in his firm conviction that the work was righteous and needed.

Breakfast being over and mass attended, the school-bell rang and the
rooms filled: a very pretty spectacle was presented in classe. Pupils
and teachers sat neatly arrayed, orderly and expectant, each bearing in
her hand the bouquet of felicitation—the prettiest spring-flowers all
fresh, and filling the air with their fragrance: I only had no bouquet.
I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease
to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their
likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love; I
never wish to receive them from hands dear to me. Mademoiselle St.
Pierre marked my empty hands—she could not believe I had been so
remiss; with avidity her eye roved over and round me: surely I must
have some solitary symbolic flower somewhere: some small knot of
violets, something to win myself praise for taste, commendation for
ingenuity. The unimaginative “Anglaise” proved better than the
Parisienne’s fears: she sat literally unprovided, as bare of bloom or
leaf as the winter tree. This ascertained, Zélie smiled, well pleased.

“How wisely you have acted to keep your money, Miss Lucie,” she said:
“silly I have gone and thrown away two francs on a bouquet of hot-house
flowers!”

And she showed with pride her splendid nosegay.

But hush! a step: the step. It came prompt, as usual, but with a
promptitude, we felt disposed to flatter ourselves, inspired by other
feelings than mere excitability of nerve and vehemence of intent. We
thought our Professor’s “foot-fall” (to speak romantically) had in it a
friendly promise this morning; and so it had.

He entered in a mood which made him as good as a new sunbeam to the
already well-lit first classe. The morning light playing amongst our
plants and laughing on our walls, caught an added lustre from M. Paul’s
all-benignant salute. Like a true Frenchman (though I don’t know why I
should say so, for he was of strain neither French nor Labassecourien),
he had dressed for the “situation” and the occasion. Not by the vague
folds, sinister and conspirator-like, of his soot-dark paletôt were the
outlines of his person obscured; on the contrary, his figure (such as
it was, I don’t boast of it) was well set off by a civilized coat and a
silken vest quite pretty to behold. The defiant and pagan bonnet-grec
had vanished: bare-headed, he came upon us, carrying a Christian hat in
his gloved hand. The little man looked well, very well; there was a
clearness of amity in his blue eye, and a glow of good feeling on his
dark complexion, which passed perfectly in the place of beauty: one
really did not care to observe that his nose, though far from small,
was of no particular shape, his cheek thin, his brow marked and square,
his mouth no rose-bud: one accepted him as he was, and felt his
presence the reverse of damping or insignificant.

He passed to his desk; he placed on the same his hat and gloves. “Bon
jour, mes amies,” said he, in a tone that somehow made amends to some
amongst us for many a sharp snap and savage snarl: not a jocund,
good-fellow tone, still less an unctuous priestly, accent, but a voice
he had belonging to himself—a voice used when his heart passed the
words to his lips. That same heart did speak sometimes; though an
irritable, it was not an ossified organ: in its core was a place,
tender beyond a man’s tenderness; a place that humbled him to little
children, that bound him to girls and women to whom, rebel as he would,
he could not disown his affinity, nor quite deny that, on the whole, he
was better with them than with his own sex.

“We all wish Monsieur a good day, and present to him our
congratulations on the anniversary of his fête,” said Mademoiselle
Zélie, constituting herself spokeswoman of the assembly; and advancing
with no more twists of affectation than were with her indispensable to
the achievement of motion, she laid her costly bouquet before him. He
bowed over it.

The long train of offerings followed: all the pupils, sweeping past
with the gliding step foreigners practise, left their tributes as they
went by. Each girl so dexterously adjusted her separate gift, that when
the last bouquet was laid on the desk, it formed the apex to a blooming
pyramid—a pyramid blooming, spreading, and towering with such
exuberance as, in the end, to eclipse the hero behind it. This ceremony
over, seats were resumed, and we sat in dead silence, expectant of a
speech.

I suppose five minutes might have elapsed, and the hush remained
unbroken; ten—and there was no sound.

Many present began, doubtless, to wonder for what Monsieur waited; as
well they might. Voiceless and viewless, stirless and wordless, he kept
his station behind the pile of flowers.

At last there issued forth a voice, rather deep, as if it spoke out of
a hollow:—

“Est-ce là tout?”

Mademoiselle Zélie looked round.

“You have all presented your bouquets?” inquired she of the pupils.

Yes; they had all given their nosegays, from the eldest to the
youngest, from the tallest to the most diminutive. The senior mistress
signified as much.

“Est-ce là tout?” was reiterated in an intonation which, deep before,
had now descended some notes lower.

“Monsieur,” said Mademoiselle St. Pierre, rising, and this time
speaking with her own sweet smile, “I have the honour to tell you that,
with a single exception, every person in classe has offered her
bouquet. For Meess Lucie, Monsieur will kindly make allowance; as a
foreigner she probably did not know our customs, or did not appreciate
their significance. Meess Lucie has regarded this ceremony as too
frivolous to be honoured by her observance.”

“Famous!” I muttered between my teeth: “you are no bad speaker, Zélie,
when you begin.”

The answer vouchsafed to Mademoiselle St Pierre from the estrade was
given in the gesticulation of a hand from behind the pyramid. This
manual action seemed to deprecate words, to enjoin silence.

A form, ere long, followed the hand. Monsieur emerged from his eclipse;
and producing himself on the front of his estrade, and gazing straight
and fixedly before him at a vast “mappe-monde” covering the wall
opposite, he demanded a third time, and now in really tragic tones—

“Est-ce là tout?”

I might yet have made all right, by stepping forwards and slipping into
his hand the ruddy little shell-box I at that moment held tight in my
own. It was what I had fully purposed to do; but, first, the comic side
of Monsieur’s behaviour had tempted me to delay, and now, Mademoiselle
St. Pierre’s affected interference provoked contumacity. The reader not
having hitherto had any cause to ascribe to Miss Snowe’s character the
most distant pretensions to perfection, will be scarcely surprised to
learn that she felt too perverse to defend herself from any imputation
the Parisienne might choose to insinuate and besides, M. Paul was so
tragic, and took my defection so seriously, he deserved to be vexed. I
kept, then, both my box and my countenance, and sat insensate as any
stone.

“It is well!” dropped at length from the lips of M. Paul; and having
uttered this phrase, the shadow of some great paroxysm—the swell of
wrath, scorn, resolve—passed over his brow, rippled his lips, and lined
his cheeks. Gulping down all further comment, he launched into his
customary “discours.”

I can’t at all remember what this “discours” was; I did not listen to
it: the gulping-down process, the abrupt dismissal of his mortification
or vexation, had given me a sensation which half-counteracted the
ludicrous effect of the reiterated “Est-ce là tout?”

Towards the close of the speech there came a pleasing diversion my
attention was again amusingly arrested.

Owing to some little accidental movement—I think I dropped my thimble
on the floor, and in stooping to regain it, hit the crown of my head
against the sharp corner of my desk; which casualties (exasperating to
me, by rights, if to anybody) naturally made a slight bustle—M. Paul
became irritated, and dismissing his forced equanimity, and casting to
the winds that dignity and self-control with which he never cared long
to encumber himself, he broke forth into the strain best calculated to
give him ease.

I don’t know how, in the progress of his “discours”, he had contrived
to cross the Channel and land on British ground; but there I found him
when I began to listen.

Casting a quick, cynical glance round the room—a glance which scathed,
or was intended to scathe, as it crossed me—he fell with fury upon “les
Anglaises.”

Never have I heard English women handled as M. Paul that morning
handled them: he spared nothing—neither their minds, morals, manners,
nor personal appearance. I specially remember his abuse of their tall
stature, their long necks, their thin arms, their slovenly dress, their
pedantic education, their impious scepticism(!), their insufferable
pride, their pretentious virtue: over which he ground his teeth
malignantly, and looked as if, had he dared, he would have said
singular things. Oh! he was spiteful, acrid, savage; and, as a natural
consequence, detestably ugly.

“Little wicked venomous man!” thought I; “am I going to harass myself
with fears of displeasing you, or hurting your feelings? No, indeed;
you shall be indifferent to me, as the shabbiest bouquet in your
pyramid.”

I grieve to say I could not quite carry out this resolution. For some
time the abuse of England and the English found and left me stolid: I
bore it some fifteen minutes stoically enough; but this hissing
cockatrice was determined to sting, and he said such things at
last—fastening not only upon our women, but upon our greatest names and
best men; sullying, the shield of Britannia, and dabbling the union
jack in mud—that I was stung. With vicious relish he brought up the
most spicy current continental historical falsehoods—than which nothing
can be conceived more offensive. Zélie, and the whole class, became one
grin of vindictive delight; for it is curious to discover how these
clowns of Labassecour secretly hate England. At last, I struck a sharp
stroke on my desk, opened my lips, and let loose this cry:—

“Vive l’Angleterre, l’Histoire et les Héros! A bas la France, la
Fiction et les Faquins!”

The class was struck of a heap. I suppose they thought me mad. The
Professor put up his handkerchief, and fiendishly smiled into its
folds. Little monster of malice! He now thought he had got the victory,
since he had made me angry. In a second he became good-humoured. With
great blandness he resumed the subject of his flowers; talked
poetically and symbolically of their sweetness, perfume, purity,
etcetera; made Frenchified comparisons between the “jeunes filles” and
the sweet blossoms before him; paid Mademoiselle St. Pierre a very
full-blown compliment on the superiority of her bouquet; and ended by
announcing that the first really fine, mild, and balmy morning in
spring, he intended to take the whole class out to breakfast in the
country. “Such of the class, at least,” he added, with emphasis, “as he
could count amongst the number of his friends.”

“Donc je n’y serai pas,” declared I, involuntarily.

“Soit!” was his response; and, gathering his flowers in his arms, he
flashed out of classe; while I, consigning my work, scissors, thimble,
and the neglected little box, to my desk, swept up-stairs. I don’t know
whether he felt hot and angry, but I am free to confess that I did.

Yet with a strange evanescent anger, I had not sat an hour on the edge
of my bed, picturing and repicturing his look, manner, words ere I
smiled at the whole scene. A little pang of regret I underwent that the
box had not been offered. I had meant to gratify him. Fate would not
have it so.

In the course of the afternoon, remembering that desks in classe were
by no means inviolate repositories, and thinking that it was as well to
secure the box, on account of the initials in the lid, P. C. D. E., for
Paul Carl (or Carlos) David Emanuel—such was his full name—these
foreigners must always have a string of baptismals—I descended to the
schoolroom.

It slept in holiday repose. The day pupils were all gone home, the
boarders were out walking, the teachers, except the surveillante of the
week, were in town, visiting or shopping; the suite of divisions was
vacant; so was the grande salle, with its huge solemn globe hanging in
the midst, its pair of many-branched chandeliers, and its horizontal
grand piano closed, silent, enjoying its mid-week Sabbath. I rather
wondered to find the first classe door ajar; this room being usually
locked when empty, and being then inaccessible to any save Madame Beck
and myself, who possessed a duplicate key. I wondered still more, on
approaching, to hear a vague movement as of life—a step, a chair
stirred, a sound like the opening of a desk.

“It is only Madame Beck doing inspection duty,” was the conclusion
following a moment’s reflection. The partially-opened door gave
opportunity for assurance on this point. I looked. Behold! not the
inspecting garb of Madame Beck—the shawl and the clean cap—but the
coat, and the close-shorn, dark head of a man. This person occupied my
chair; his olive hand held my desk open, his nose was lost to view
amongst my papers. His back was towards me, but there could not be a
moment’s question about identity. Already was the attire of ceremony
discarded: the cherished and ink-stained paletôt was resumed; the
perverse bonnet-grec lay on the floor, as if just dropped from the
hand, culpably busy.

Now I knew, and I had long known, that that hand of M. Emanuel’s was on
the most intimate terms with my desk; that it raised and lowered the
lid, ransacked and arranged the contents, almost as familiarly as my
own. The fact was not dubious, nor did he wish it to be so: he left
signs of each visit palpable and unmistakable; hitherto, however, I had
never caught him in the act: watch as I would, I could not detect the
hours and moments of his coming. I saw the brownie’s work in exercises
left overnight full of faults, and found next morning carefully
corrected: I profited by his capricious good-will in loans full welcome
and refreshing. Between a sallow dictionary and worn-out grammar would
magically grow a fresh interesting new work, or a classic, mellow and
sweet in its ripe age. Out of my work-basket would laughingly peep a
romance, under it would lurk the pamphlet, the magazine, whence last
evening’s reading had been extracted. Impossible to doubt the source
whence these treasures flowed: had there been no other indication, one
condemning and traitor peculiarity, common to them all, settled the
question—they smelt of cigars. This was very shocking, of course: I
thought so at first, and used to open the window with some bustle, to
air my desk, and with fastidious finger and thumb, to hold the peccant
brochures forth to the purifying breeze. I was cured of that formality
suddenly. Monsieur caught me at it one day, understood the inference,
instantly relieved my hand of its burden, and, in another moment, would
have thrust the same into the glowing stove. It chanced to be a book,
on the perusal of which I was bent; so for once I proved as decided and
quicker than himself; recaptured the spoil, and—having saved this
volume—never hazarded a second. With all this, I had never yet been
able to arrest in his visits the freakish, friendly, cigar-loving
phantom.

But now at last I had him: there he was—the very brownie himself; and
there, curling from his lips, was the pale blue breath of his Indian
darling: he was smoking into my desk: it might well betray him.
Provoked at this particular, and yet pleased to surprise him—pleased,
that is, with the mixed feeling of the housewife who discovers at last
her strange elfin ally busy in the dairy at the untimely churn—I softly
stole forward, stood behind him, bent with precaution over his
shoulder.

My heart smote me to see that—after this morning’s hostility, after my
seeming remissness, after the puncture experienced by his feelings, and
the ruffling undergone by his temper—he, all willing to forget and
forgive, had brought me a couple of handsome volumes, of which the
title and authorship were guarantees for interest. Now, as he sat
bending above the desk, he was stirring up its contents; but with
gentle and careful hand; disarranging indeed, but not harming. My heart
smote me: as I bent over him, as he sat unconscious, doing me what good
he could, and I daresay not feeling towards me unkindly, my morning’s
anger quite melted: I did not dislike Professor Emanuel.

I think he heard me breathe. He turned suddenly: his temperament was
nervous, yet he never started, and seldom changed colour: there was
something hardy about him.

“I thought you were gone into town with the other teachers,” said he,
taking a grim gripe of his self-possession, which half-escaped him—“It
is as well you are not. Do you think I care for being caught? Not I. I
often visit your desk.”

“Monsieur, I know it.”

“You find a brochure or tome now and then; but you don’t read them,
because they have passed under this?”—touching his cigar.

“They have, and are no better for the process; but I read them.”

“Without pleasure?”

“Monsieur must not be contradicted.”

“Do you like them, or any of them?—are they acceptable?” “Monsieur has
seen me reading them a hundred times, and knows I have not so many
recreations as to undervalue those he provides.”

“I mean well; and, if you see that I mean well, and derive some little
amusement from my efforts, why can we not be friends?”

“A fatalist would say—because we cannot.”

“This morning,” he continued, “I awoke in a bright mood, and came into
classe happy; you spoiled my day.”

“No, Monsieur, only an hour or two of it, and that unintentionally.”

“Unintentionally! No. It was my fête-day; everybody wished me happiness
but you. The little children of the third division gave each her knot
of violets, lisped each her congratulation:—you—nothing. Not a bud,
leaf, whisper—not a glance. Was this unintentional?”

“I meant no harm.”

“Then you really did not know our custom? You were unprepared? You
would willingly have laid out a few centimes on a flower to give me
pleasure, had you been aware that it was expected? Say so, and all is
forgotten, and the pain soothed.”

“I did know that it was expected: I was prepared; yet I laid out no
centimes on flowers.”

“It is well—you do right to be honest. I should almost have hated you
had you flattered and lied. Better declare at once ‘Paul Carl
Emanuel—je te déteste, mon garçon!’—than smile an interest, look an
affection, and be false and cold at heart. False and cold I don’t think
you are; but you have made a great mistake in life, that I believe; I
think your judgment is warped—that you are indifferent where you ought
to be grateful—and perhaps devoted and infatuated, where you ought to
be cool as your name. Don’t suppose that I wish you to have a passion
for me, Mademoiselle; Dieu vous en garde! What do you start for?
Because I said passion? Well, I say it again. There is such a word, and
there is such a thing—though not within these walls, thank heaven! You
are no child that one should not speak of what exists; but I only
uttered the word—the thing, I assure you, is alien to my whole life and
views. It died in the past—in the present it lies buried—its grave is
deep-dug, well-heaped, and many winters old: in the future there will
be a resurrection, as I believe to my souls consolation; but all will
then be changed—form and feeling: the mortal will have put on
immortality—it will rise, not for earth, but heaven. All I say to
you, Miss Lucy Snowe, is—that you ought to treat Professor Paul
Emanuel decently.”

I could not, and did not contradict such a sentiment.

“Tell me,” he pursued, “when it is your fête-day, and I will not
grudge a few centimes for a small offering.”

“You will be like me, Monsieur: this cost more than a few centimes, and
I did not grudge its price.”

And taking from the open desk the little box, I put it into his hand.

“It lay ready in my lap this morning,” I continued; “and if Monsieur
had been rather more patient, and Mademoiselle St. Pierre less
interfering—perhaps I should say, too, if I had been calmer and
wiser—I should have given it then.”

He looked at the box: I saw its clear warm tint and bright azure
circlet pleased his eyes. I told him to open it.

“My initials!” said he, indicating the letters in the lid. “Who told
you I was called Carl David?”

“A little bird, Monsieur.”

“Does it fly from me to you? Then one can tie a message under its wing
when needful.”

He took out the chain—a trifle indeed as to value, but glossy with silk
and sparkling with beads. He liked that too—admired it artlessly, like
a child.

“For me?”

“Yes, for you.”

“This is the thing you were working at last night?”

“The same.”

“You finished it this morning?”

“I did.”

“You commenced it with the intention that it should be mine?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“And offered on my fête-day?”

“Yes.”

“This purpose continued as you wove it?”

Again I assented.

“Then it is not necessary that I should cut out any portion—saying,
this part is not mine: it was plaited under the idea and for the
adornment of another?”

“By no means. It is neither necessary, nor would it be just.”

“This object is all mine?”

“That object is yours entirely.”

Straightway Monsieur opened his paletôt, arranged the guard splendidly
across his chest, displaying as much and suppressing as little as he
could: for he had no notion of concealing what he admired and thought
decorative. As to the box, he pronounced it a superb bonbonnière—he was
fond of bonbons, by the way—and as he always liked to share with others
what pleased himself, he would give his “dragées” as freely as he lent
his books. Amongst the kind brownie’s gifts left in my desk, I forgot
to enumerate many a paper of chocolate comfits. His tastes in these
matters were southern, and what we think infantine. His simple lunch
consisted frequently of a “brioche,” which, as often as not, he shared
with some child of the third division.

“A présent c’est un fait accompli,” said he, re-adjusting his paletôt;
and we had no more words on the subject. After looking over the two
volumes he had brought, and cutting away some pages with his penknife
(he generally pruned before lending his books, especially if they were
novels, and sometimes I was a little provoked at the severity of his
censorship, the retrenchments interrupting the narrative), he rose,
politely touched his bonnet-grec, and bade me a civil good-day.

“We are friends now,” thought I, “till the next time we quarrel.”

We might have quarrelled again that very same evening, but, wonderful
to relate, failed, for once, to make the most of our opportunity.

Contrary to all expectation, M. Paul arrived at the study-hour. Having
seen so much of him in the morning, we did not look for his presence at
night. No sooner were we seated at lessons, however, than he appeared.
I own I was glad to see him, so glad that I could not help greeting his
arrival with a smile; and when he made his way to the same seat about
which so serious a misunderstanding had formerly arisen, I took good
care not to make too much room for him; he watched with a jealous,
side-long look, to see whether I shrank away, but I did not, though the
bench was a little crowded. I was losing the early impulse to recoil
from M. Paul. Habituated to the paletôt and bonnet-grec, the
neighbourhood of these garments seemed no longer uncomfortable or very
formidable. I did not now sit restrained, “asphyxiée” (as he used to
say) at his side; I stirred when I wished to stir, coughed when it was
necessary, even yawned when I was tired—did, in short, what I pleased,
blindly reliant upon his indulgence. Nor did my temerity, this evening
at least, meet the punishment it perhaps merited; he was both indulgent
and good-natured; not a cross glance shot from his eyes, not a hasty
word left his lips. Till the very close of the evening, he did not
indeed address me at all, yet I felt, somehow, that he was full of
friendliness. Silence is of different kinds, and breathes different
meanings; no words could inspire a pleasanter content than did M.
Paul’s worldless presence. When the tray came in, and the bustle of
supper commenced, he just said, as he retired, that he wished me a good
night and sweet dreams; and a good night and sweet dreams I had.