absentmindedly to Bushs garrulity when he went in to visit him, and did nothing at all to satisfy his curiosity regarding the house in which they had found shelter, and the intentions of their hosts. Nor was his mood relieved by his pitying contempt for himself at thus working off his ill temper on his unoffending lieutenant. He deserted Bush as soon as he decently could and went off in search of his hosts in the drawing room.
The Vicomtesse alone was there, and she made him welcome with a smile.
M. de Graçay is at work in his study, she explained. You must be content with my entertaining you this morning.
To say even the obvious in French was an effort for Hornblower, but he managed to make the suitable reply, which the lady received with a smile. But conversation did not proceed smoothly, with Hornblower having laboriously to build up his sentences beforehand and to avoid the easy descent into Spanish which was liable to entrap him whenever he began to think in a foreign tongue. Nevertheless, the opening sentences regarding the storm last night, the snow in the fields, and the flood, elicited for Hornblower one interesting factthat the river whose roar they could hear was the Loire, four hundred miles or more from its mouth in the Bay of Biscay. A few miles upstream lay the town of Nevers; a little way downstream the large tributary, the Allier, joined the Loire, but there was hardly a house and no village on the river in that direction for twenty miles as far as Pouillyfrom whose vineyards had come the wine they had drunk last night.
The river is only as big as this in winter, said the Vicomtesse. In summer it dwindles away to almost nothing. There are places where one can walk across it, from one bank to the other. Then it is blue, and its banks are golden, but now it is black and ugly.
Yes, said Hornblower.
He felt a peculiar tingling sensation down his thighs and calves as the words recalled his experience of the night before, the swoop over the fall and the mad battle in the flood. He and Bush and Brown might easily all be sodden corpses now, rolling among the rocks at the bottom of the river until the process of corruption should bring them to the surface.
I have not thanked you and M. de Graçay for your hospitality, he said, picking his words with care. It is very kind of the Count.
Kind? He is the kindest man in the whole world. I cant tell you how good he is.
There was no doubting the sincerity of the Counts daughter-in-law as she made this speech; her wide humorous mouth parted and her dark eyes glowed.
Really? said Hornblowerthe word vraiment slipped naturally from his lips now that some animation had come into the conversation.
Yes, really. He is good all the way through. He is sweet and kind, by nature and notnot as a result of experience. He has never said a word to me, not once, not a word, about the disappointment I have caused him.
You, madame?
Yes. Oh, isnt it obvious? I am not a great ladyMarcel should not have married me. My father is a Normandy peasant, on his own land, but a peasant all the same, while the Ladons, Counts of Graçay, go back toto Saint Louis, or before that. Marcel told me how disappointed was the Count at our marriage, but I should never have known of it otherwisenot by word or by action. Marcel was the eldest son then, because Antoine had been killed at Austerlitz. And Marcel is dead, toohe was wounded at Aspernand I have no son, no child at all, and the Count has never reproached me, never.
Hornblower tried to make some kind of sympathetic noise.
And Louis-Marie is dead as well now. He died of fever in Spain. He was the third son, and M. de Graçay is the last of the Ladons. I think it broke his heart, but he has never said a bitter word.
The three sons are all dead? said Hornblower.
Yes, as I told you. M. de Graçay was an émigréhe lived in your town of London with his children for years after the Revolution. And then the boys grew up and they heard of the fame of the Emperorhe was First Consul thenand they all wanted to share in the glory of France. It was to please them that the Count took advantage of the amnesty and returned herethis is all that the Revolution has left of his estates. He never went to Paris. What would he have in common with the Emperor? But he allowed his sons to join the army, and now they are all dead, Antoine and Marcel and Louis-Marie. Marcel married me when his regiment was billeted in our village, but the others never married. Louis-Marie was only eighteen when he died.
Terrible! said Hornblower.
The banal words did not express his sense of the pathos of the story, but it was all he could think of. He understood now the Counts statement of the night before that the authorities
would be willing to accept his bare word that he had seen nothing of any escaped prisoners. A great gentleman whose three sons had died in the Imperial service would never be suspected of harbouring fugitives.
Understand me, went on the Vicomtesse. It is not because he hates the Emperor that he makes you welcome here. It is because he is kind, because you needed helpI have never known him to deny help to anyone. Oh, it is hard to explain, but I think you understand.