François was the only one of them who behaved unconcernedly, or who laughed during those three weeks. He chaffed Diane remorselessly, but always with good nature, and offered to provide her with a pedigree as long as that of the Marquis, and advised her to return to what he declared was the original spelling of her name, D’Orian, and boldly proclaim herself a scion of that noble house. The family, he declared, antedated the Cæsars, and was founded shortly after Romulus and Remus, and asserted that the planet Aurania was named for Diane’s ancestors. At these jokes, all would once have laughed; now, nobody thought them amusing except François himself.
François breakfasted with the Bishop several times in those tumultuous days, and on every occasion, as Mathilde sardonically remarked to the Bishop, something mysteriously disappeared. A handsome muffler of the Bishop’s apparently evaporated, also an excellent umbrella, and several other useful trifles.
“But,” said the Bishop, boldly, to Mathilde, “suppose I gave that scarf to M. le Bourgeois? I never liked it. And as for the umbrella--well, it stood in the anteroom and may have disappeared in any one of a hundred ways, and an umbrella is like innocence--once lost, it is never recovered. Why are you so suspicious, Mathilde? And besides, do you think I can forget that my father was a laborer on the estates of--”
“So your Grace has told me a thousand times,” rudely interrupted Mathilde, flinging out of the room.
The Bishop winked softly to himself; as usual, he had merely suggested a hypothetical case. He knew as well as Mathilde where the scarf and the umbrella and the rest of the things went.
Even the General succumbed to François’ charms to the extent of ten francs which François asked as a temporary assistance.
“Because,” as François said, “you know the proverb--‘God is omnipotent, but money is His first lieutenant.’ Virtue cannot secure a man from poverty--else, would I be lending money instead of borrowing it.”
General Bion promptly handed out the ten francs, and as promptly put it down in his notebook under the head of “Charity.”
The Bishop, by way of excusing himself for listening to François’ songs and jokes and watching his delicious antics, began to urge François quite seriously to repent and confess. At this François balked.