Raynal.

As the latter part of this letter seemed to require a reply, the baroness wrote a polite note, and Jacintha sent Dard to leave it for the commandant at Riviere’s lodgings.  But first they all sat down and wrote kind and pitying and soothing letters to Edouard.  Need I say these letters fell upon him like balm?

They all inquired carelessly in their postscripts what he had decided as their referee.  He replied mysteriously that they would know that in a week or two.  Meantime, all he thought it prudent to tell them was that he had endeavored to be just to both parties.

“Little solemn puppy,” said Rose, and was racked with curiosity.

Next week Raynal called on the baroness.  She received him alone.  They talked about Madame Raynal.  The next day he dined with the whole party, and the commandant’s manners were the opposite of what the baroness had inculcated.  But she had a strong prejudice in his favor.  Had her feelings been the other way his brusquerie would have shocked her.  It amused her.  If people’s hearts are with you, that for their heads!

He came every day for a week, chatted with the baroness, walked with the young ladies; and when after work he came over in the evening, Rose used to cross-examine him, and out came such descriptions of battles and sieges, such heroism and such simplicity mixed, as made the evening pass delightfully.  On these occasions the young ladies fixed their glowing eyes on him, and drank in his character as well as his narrative, in which were fewer “I’s” than in anything of the sort you ever read or heard.

At length Rose contrived to draw him aside, and, hiding her curiosity under feigned nonchalance, asked him what the referee had decided.  He told her that was a secret for the present.

“Well, but,” said Rose, “not from me.  Edouard and I have no secrets.”

“Come, that’s good,” said Raynal.  “Why, you are the very one he warned me against the most; said you were as curious as Mother Eve, and as sharp as her needle.”

“Then he is a little scurrilous traitor,” cried Rose, turning very red.  “So that is how he talks of me behind my back, and calls me an angel to my face; I’ll pay him for this.  Do tell me, commandant; never mind what he says.”

“What! disobey orders?”

“Orders? to you from that boy!”

“Oh!” said Raynal, “for that matter, we soldiers are used to command one moment, and obey the next.”

In a word, this military pedant was impracticable, and Rose gave him up in disgust, and began to call up a sulky look when the other two sang his praises.  For the old lady pronounced him charming, and Josephine said he was a man of crystal; never said a word he did not mean, and she wished she was like him.  But the baroness thought this was going a little too far.

“No, thank you,” said she hastily; “he is a man, a thorough man.  He would make an intolerable woman.  A fine life if one had a parcel of women about, all blurting out their real minds every moment, and never smoothing matters.”