The days went on dully, shortening and darkening as they neared Christmas. Félise wrote letters to her uncle, artlessly filled with the magic of the South. Two letters from Lucilla Merriton decreed extension of her guest’s visit. Bigourdin began to lose his genial view of existence. He talked gloomily of France’s unreadiness for war. There were thieves and traitors in the Cabinet. Whole Army Corps were notoriously deficient in equipment and transport. It was enough, he declared, to make a patriotic Frenchman commit protesting suicide in the lobby of the Chamber of Deputies. And what news had Martin received of Mademoiselle Corinna? Martin knew little save that she was engaged in some mysterious work in London.
“But what is she doing?” cried Bigourdin, at last.
“I haven’t the remotest idea,” replied Martin.
“_Dites donc, mon ami_,” said Bigourdin, the gloom of anxiety deepening on his brow. “You do not think, by any chance”—he hesitated before breathing the terrible surmise—“you do not think she has made herself a suffragette?”
“How can I tell?” replied Martin. “With Corinna all things are possible.”
“Except to take command of the Hôtel des Grottes,” said Bigourdin, and he sighed vastly.
One evening he said: “My good friend Martin, I am feeling upset. Instead of going to the Café de l’Univers, let us have a glass of the _vieille fine du Brigadier_ in the _petit salon_ where I have ordered Marie to make a good fire.”
The old Liqueur Brandy of the Brigadier was literally, from the market standpoint, worth its weight in gold. In the seventies Bigourdin’s father, during the course of reparations, had discovered, in a blocked and forgotten cellar, three almost evaporated casks bearing the inscription just decipherable beneath the mildew in Brigadier General Bigourdin’s old war-dog handwriting: “Cognac. 1812.” His grandson, who had lost a leg and an arm in 1870, knew what was due to the brandy of the _Grande Armée_. Instead of filling up the casks with newer brandy and selling the result at extravagant prices, he reverently bottled the remaining contents of the three casks and on each bottle stuck a printed label setting forth the great history of the brandy, and stored the lot in a dry bin which he charged his son to venerate as one of the sacred depositaries of France in the family of Bigourdin.