They spoke low, like conspirators, with their eyes upon the carpet.
'And grandpapa,' said Paul, but not in a tone of confidence, 'could you try him?'
Yet he knew well enough what old Réhu was. A touchy, selfish man all but a hundred years old, who would have seen them all die rather than deprive himself of a pinch of snuff or a single one of the pins that were always stuck on the lapels of his coat. Ah, poor child! He must be hard up indeed before he could think of his grandfather.
'Well, you would not like me to try ---- ----.' She paused.
'In the Rue de Courcelles. I might get something in advance for the tomb.'
'There? Good Heavens! You had better not!'
He spoke to her imperiously, with pale lips and a disagreeable expression in his eye; then recovering his self-contained and fleeting tone, he said:
'Don't trouble any more about it. It is only a crisis to be got through. I have had plenty before now.'
She held out to him his hat, which he was looking for. As he could get nothing from her, he would be off. To keep him a few minutes longer, she began talking of an important business which she had in hand--a marriage, which she had been asked to arrange.
At the word _marriage_ he started and looked at her askance: 'Who was it?' She had promised to say nothing at present. But she could not refuse him. It was the Prince d'Athis.
It was her turn now to show him the side view of her crooked nose.
'You do not know the lady. She is a foreigner with a fortune. If I succeed I might help you. I have made my terms in black and white.'
'Her _Sammy_,' Her dear prince! And after fifteen years!'
Madame Astier's gesture expressed the utter carelessness of one woman for the feelings of another.
'What else could she expect at her age?' said she.
'She was born in 1827. We are in 1880. You can do the sum. Just a year older than myself.'
His mother laughed as she said, 'Why, yes, you rude boy! What are you surprised at? I am sure you thought her twenty years younger. It's a fact, it seems, that the most experienced of you know nothing about women. Well, you see, the poor prince could not have her hanging on to him all his life. Besides, one of these days the old Duke will die, and then where would he be? Fancy him tied to that old woman!'