When Valmond Came To Pontiac | Page 8

like us in some things, like them in others, and more--splendid. He speaks such fine things! You mind the other night at the Louis Quinze. He is like--"
She paused. "What is he like?" Parpon asked slyly, enjoying her difficulty.
"Ah, I know," she answered; "he is a little like Madame the American who came two years ago. There is something--something!"
Parpon laughed again. "Like Madame Chalice from New York--fudge!" Yet he eyed her as if he admired her penetration. "How?" he urged.
"I don't know--quite," she answered, a little pettishly. "But I used to see Madame go off in the woods, and she would sit hour by hour, and listen to the waterfall, and talk to the birds, and at herself too; and more than once I saw her shut her hands--like that! You remember what tiny hands she had?" (She glanced at her own brown ones unconsciously.) "And she spoke out, her eyes running with tears--and she all in pretty silks, and a colour like a rose. She spoke out like this: 'Oh, if I could only do something, something, some big thing! What is all this silly coming and going to me, when I know, I know I might do it, if I had the chance! O Harry, Harry, can't you see!'"
"Harry was her husband. Ah, what a fisherman was he!" said Parpon, nodding. "What did she mean by doing 'big things'?" he added.
"How do I know?" she asked fretfully. "But Monsieur Valmond seems to me like her, just the same."
"Monsieur Valmond is a great man," said Parpon slowly.
"You know!" she cried; "you know! Oh, tell me, what is he? Who is he? Where does he come from? Why is he here? How long will he stay? Tell me, how long will se stay?" She caught flutteringly at Parpon's shoulder. "You remember what I sang the other night?" he asked.
"Yes, yes," she answered quickly. "Oh, how beautiful it was! Ah, Parpon, why don't you sing for us oftener, and all the world would love you, and--"
"I don't love the world," he retorted gruffly; "and I'll sing for the devil" (she crossed herself) "as soon as for silly gossips in Pontiac."
"Well, well!" she asked; "what had your song to do with him, with Monsieur Valmond?"
"Think hard, my dear," he said, with mystery in his look. Then, breaking off: "Madame Chalice is coming back to-day; the Manor House is open, and you should see how they fly round up there." He nodded towards the hill beyond.
"Pontiac'll be a fine place by and by," she said, for she had village patriotism deep in her veins. Had not her people lived there long before the conquest by the English?
"But tell me, tell me what your song had to do with Monsieur," she urged again. "It's a pretty song, but--"
"Think about it," he answered provokingly. "Adieu, my child!" he went on mockingly, using Valmond's words, and catching both her hands as he had done; then, springing upon a bench by the oven, he kissed her on both cheeks. "Adieu, my child!" he said again, and, jumping down, trotted away out into the road. Back to her, from the dust he made as he shuffled away, there came the words:
"Gold and silver he will bring, Vive le roi, la reine! And eke the daughter of a king Vive Napoleon!"
She went about her work, the song in her ears, and the words of the refrain beat in and out, out and in:
"Vive Napoleon." Her brow was troubled, and she perched her head on this side and on that, as she tried to guess what the dwarf had meant. At last she sat down on a bench at the door of her home, and the summer afternoon spent its glories on her; for the sunflowers and the hollyhocks were round her, and the warmth gave her face a shining health and joyousness. There she brooded till she heard the voice of her mother calling across the meadow; then she got up with a sigh, and softly repeated Parpon's words: "He is a great man!"
In the middle of that night she started up from a sound sleep, and, with a little cry, whispered into the silence: "Napoleon--Napoleon!"
She was thinking of Valmond. A revelation had come to her out of her dreams. But she laughed at it, and buried her face in her pillow and went to sleep, hoping to dream again.

CHAPTER III
In less than one week Valmond was as outstanding from Pontiac as Dalgrothe Mountain, just beyond it in the south. His liberality, his jocundity, his occasional abstraction, his meditative pose, were all his own; his humour that of the people. He was too quick in repartee and drollery for a bourgeois, too "near to the bone" in point for an aristocrat, with his touch of the comedian and the