THE AMERICAN
After his interview with the curé, however, he had consented, and a telegram had been despatched to his mother. "But the Marquise will scarcely have time—!" So judged Newman's conductor.
"Well, it's a wicked, wanton, infernal affair!" So judged Newman himself.
"Ah, you don't approve?" his friend gravely questioned, while he himself remained passionately careless of the involved reflexion on this gentleman's control of the encounter.
"Approve? cried Newman. "I wish that when I had him there night before last I had locked him up in my cabinet de toilette!"
Valentin's supporter opened his eyes and shook his head up and down two or three times, portentously, with a little flute-like whistle. But he had evidently been prepared, in respect to this outer barbarian, for some oddity of emotion and expression. They had in any case reached the inn, where a stout maid-servant in a nightcap was on the threshold, with a lantern, to take the traveller's bag from the porter who trudged behind him. Valentin was lodged on the ground floor at the back of the house, and Newman's companion went along a stone-faced passage and softly opened a door. Then he beckoned to the visitor, who advanced and looked into the room, lighted by a single shaded candle. Beside the fire sat M. de Grosjoyaux asleep in his dressing-gown—a short stout fair man, with an air of gay surprise, whom Newman had seen several times in Valentin's company. On the bed lay Valentin, pale and still, his eyes closed—a figure very shocking to Newman,
383
