Where then were Louise and Gontran? What were they doing? All at once, the sound of their voices reached them from a distance. They were returning. Madame Honorat woke up and looked astonished.
"What! you are here again! I did not notice you coming back. And the others, have you found them?"
Paul replied: "There they are! They are coming."
They recognized Gontran's laughter. This laughter relieved Charlotte from a crushing weight, which had oppressed her mind--she could not have explained why.
They were soon able to distinguish the pair. Gontran had almost broken into a running pace, dragging by the arm the young girl, who was quite flushed. And, even before they had come up, so great a hurry was he in to tell his story, he shouted:
"You don't know what we surprised. I give you a thousand guesses to discover it! The handsome Doctor Mazelli along with the daughter of the illustrious Professor Cloche, as Will would say, the pretty widow with the red hair. Oh! yes, indeed--surprised, you understand? He was embracing her, the scamp. Oh! yes--oh! yes."
Madame Honorat, at this immoderate display of gaiety, made a dignified movement:
"Oh! M. le Comte, think of these young ladies!"
"You are perfectly right, dear Madame, to recall me to the proprieties. All your inspirations are excellent."
Then, in order that they might not be all seen going back together, the two young men bowed to the ladies, and returned through the wood to the village.
"Well, I told her that I adored her and that I would be delighted to marry her."
"She said, with charming discretion, 'That concerns my father. It is to him that I will give my answer.'"
"To intrust my ambassador Andermatt at once with the official application. And if the old boor makes any row about it, I'll compromise his daughter with a splash."
And, as Andermatt was again engaged in conversation with Doctor Latonne on the terrace of the Casino, Gontran stopped here, and immediately made his brother-in-law acquainted with the situation.
Paul went off along the road to Riom. He wanted to be alone so much did he find himself invaded by that agitation of the entire mind and body into which every meeting with a woman casts a man who is on the point of falling in love. For some time past he had felt, without quite realizing it, the penetrating and youthful fascination of this forsaken girl. He found her so nice, so good, so simple, so upright, so innocent, that from the first he had been moved by compassion for her, by that tender compassion with which the sorrows of women always inspire us. Then, when he had seen her frequently, he had allowed to bud forth in his heart that grain, that tiny grain, of tenderness which they sow in us so quickly, and which grows to such a height. And now, for the last hour especially, he was beginning to feel himself possessed, to feel within him that constant presence of the absent which is the first sign of love. He proceeded along the road, haunted by the remembrance of her glance, by the sound of her voice, by the way in which she smiled or wept, by the gait with which she walked, even by the color and the flutter of her dress. And he said to himself: