The fun of the expedition (and Dudley Sowerby had wound himself up to relish it) was at night in the towns, when the sound of instrumental and vocal music attracted crowds beneath the windows of the hotel, and they heard zon, zon, violon, fete et basse; not bad fluting, excellent fiddling, such singing as a maestro, conducting his own Opera, would have approved.  So Victor said of his darlings’ voices.  Nesta’s and her mother’s were a perfect combination; Mr. Barmby’s trompe in union, sufficiently confirmed the popular impression, that they were artistes.  They had been ceremoniously ushered to their carriages, with expressions of gratitude, at the departure from Rouen; and the Boniface at Gisors had entreated them to stay another night, to give an entertainment.  Victor took his pleasure in letting it be known, that they were a quiet English family, simply keeping-up the habits they practiced in Old England:  all were welcome to hear them while they were doing it; but they did not give entertainments.

The pride of the pleasure of reversing the general idea of English dulness among our neighbours, was perceived to have laid fast hold of Dudley Sowerby at Dreux.  He was at the window from time to time, counting heads below.  For this reason or a better, he begged Nesta to supplant the flute duet with the soprano and contralto of the Helena section of the Mefistofele, called the Serenade:  La Luna immobile.  She consulted her mother, and they sang it.  The crowds below, swollen to a block of the street, were dead still, showing the instinctive good manners of the people.  Then mademoiselle astonished them with a Provencal or Cevennes air, Huguenot, though she was Catholic; but it suited her mezzo-soprano tones; and it rang massively of the martial-religious.  To what heights of spiritual grandeur might not a Huguenot France have marched!  Dudley Sowerby, heedlessly, under an emotion that could be stirred in him with force, by the soul of religion issuing through music, addressed his ejaculation to Lady Grace Halley.  She did nor shrug or snub him, but rejoined:  ‘I could go to battle with that song in the ears.’  She liked seeing him so happily transformed; and liked the effect of it on Nesta when his face shone in talking.  He was at home with the girl’s eyes, as he had never been.  A song expressing in one of the combative and devotional, went to the springs of his blood; for he was of an old warrior race, beneath the thick crust of imposed peaceful maxims and commercial pursuits and habitual stiff correctness.  As much as wine, will music bring out the native bent of the civilized man:  endow him with language too.  He was as if unlocked; he met Nesta’s eyes and ran in a voluble interchange, that gave him flattering after-thoughts; and at the moment sensibly a new and assured, or to some extent assured, station beside a girl so vivid; by which the young lady would be helped to perceive his unvoiced solider gifts.