Part 37 (1/2)

The interrupted conversation was renewed.

”Candidly now,” said Musette to Marcel, ”where were you going just now?”

”I told you, to see Laura.”

”Is she pretty?”

”Her mouth is a nest of smiles.”

”Oh! I know all that sort of thing.”

”But you yourself,” said Marcel, ”whence came you on the wings of this four-wheeler?”

”I came back from the railway station where I had been to see off Alexis, who is going on a visit to his family.”

”What sort of man is Alexis?”

In turn Musette sketched a charming portrait of her present lover.

Whilst walking along Marcel and Musette continued thus on the open Boulevard the comedy of reawakening love. With the same simplicity, in turn tender and jesting, they went verse by verse through that immortal ode in which Horace and Lydia extol with such grace the charms of their new loves, and end by adding a postscript to their old ones. As they reached the corner of the street a rather strong picket of soldiers suddenly issued from it.

Musette struck an att.i.tude of alarm, and clutching hold of Marcel's arm said, ”Ah! Good heavens! Look there, soldiers; there is going to be another revolution. Let us bolt off, I am awfully afraid. See me indoors.”

”But where shall we go?” asked Marcel.

”To my place,” said Musette. ”You shall see how nice it is. I invite you to supper. We will talk politics.”

”No,” replied Marcel, who thought of Monsieur Alexis. ”I will not go to your place, despite your offer of a supper. I do not like to drink my wine out of another's gla.s.s.”

Musette was silent in face of this refusal. Then through the mist of her recollections she saw the poor home of the artist, for Marcel had not become a millionaire. She had an idea, and profiting by meeting another picket she manifested fresh alarm.

”They are going to fight,” she exclaimed. ”I shall never dare go home.

Marcel, my dear fellow, take me to one of my lady friends, who must be living in your neighborhood.”

As they were crossing the Pont Neuf Musette broke into a laugh.

”What is it?” asked Marcel.

”Nothing,” replied Musette, ”only I remember that my friend has moved.

She is living at Batignolles.”

On seeing Marcel and Musette arrive arm in arm Rodolphe was not astonished.

”It is always so,” said he, ”with these badly buried loves.”

CHAPTER XVI

The Pa.s.sage of the Red Sea

For five or six years Marcel had worked at the famous painting which (he said) represented the Pa.s.sage of the Red Sea; and for five or six years, this masterpiece of color had been obstinately refused by the jury. In fact, by dint of going and returning so many times from the artist's study to the Exhibition, and from the Exhibition to the study, the picture knew the road to the Louvre well enough to have gone thither of itself, if it had been put on wheels. Marcel, who had repainted the canvas ten times over, from top to bottom, attributed to personal hostility on the part of the jury the ostracism which annually repulsed him from the large saloon; nevertheless he was not totally discouraged by the obstinate rejection which greeted him at every Exhibition. He was comfortably established in the persuasion that his picture was, on a somewhat smaller scale, the pendant required by ”The Marriage of Cana,”