In that vast, merry hive there was one soul, at least, that neither saw the sunshine nor thrilled to the glory of a re-created earth. Pierre Le Beau had been sitting for many moments before an untasted breakfast, his body slouched forward under the table, his eyes fixed vacantly on a square of light slowly pushing its way through an opened window into the room. Count Ronsard, already in his easy-chair, with letters, papers, cigarettes, and an extra cup of coffee on a low stand beside him, lifted, just before opening each fresh missive, a look partly amused, partly irritated upon his sullen compatriot.
Tsuna, the butler, cautiously approached, and substituted a fresh cup of coffee for the forgotten cold one. Pierre caught at the edge of the saucer. "Merci, Tsuna," he said with a smile which all his abstraction could not keep from being sweet, "but take all else away. I want nothing--or, at least, I have eaten sufficiently."
"Yes, Tsuna," supplemented the minister. "Clear the table, and admit no guests. If a 'chit' comes, bring it in yourself."
Pierre would have sunk back into his lethargy, but the count, having by this time finished his mail, deliberately set himself to learn the secret of this new dejection.
"What have we here, young lover?" he cried gayly. "Why do you affront the fair morning with your sighs? La, la, I know the symptoms,--the rueful mouth, set eyes, loathed viands,--all speak the distemper of love. Come, now, unburden thyself, mon fils. I have a leisure hour. I see in thee need for brisk philosophy."
Pierre shook himself free with difficulty from his haunting visions,--Tetsujo's black face and burning eyes; a windswept hedge, bowing and straining in storm until at the next gust of tempest it must lie flat, like the cover of a book, showing clear her home; the white, strained, watching face; and, later, in a stiller, denser blackness, faint chinks through upright hedge-stems of bamboo falling from a broadly lighted house; his own last desperate song of Carmen; the terrible answering cry; the sound of feet on gravel; the sound of tender hands beating on thorn; a mother's sob; and then,--devouring silence. How had the sun such callousness that it could shine to-day after such a blackness?