Benoit had welcomed M. Andre with incoherencies of delight; almost had he gambolled about him like some faithful dog, whilst conducting him to the salon and the presence of the Lord of Gavrillac, who would--in the words of Benoit--be ravished to see M. Andre again.
"Monseigneur! Monseigneur!" he cried in a quavering voice, entering a pace or two in advance of the visitor. "It is M. Andre... M. Andre, your godson, who comes to kiss your hand. He is here... and so fine that you would hardly know him. Here he is, monseigneur! Is he not beautiful?"
And the old servant rubbed his hands in conviction of the delight that he believed he was conveying to his master.
Andre-Louis crossed the threshold of that great room, soft-carpeted to the foot, dazzling to the eye. It was immensely lofty, and its festooned ceiling was carried on fluted pillars with gilded capitals. The door by which he entered, and the windows that opened upon the garden, were of an enormous height--almost, indeed, the full height of the room itself. It was a room overwhelmingly gilded, with an abundance of ormolu encrustations on the furniture, in which it nowise differed from what was customary in the dwellings of people of birth and wealth. Never, indeed, was there a time in which so much gold was employed decoratively as in this age when coined gold was almost unprocurable, and paper money had been put into circulation to supply the lack. It was a saying of Andre-Louis' that if these people could only have been induced to put the paper on their walls and the gold into their pockets, the finances of the kingdom might soon have been in better case.
The Seigneur--furbished and beruffled to harmonize with his surroundings--had risen, startled by this exuberant invasion on the part of Benoit, who had been almost as forlorn as himself since their coming to Meudon.
"What is it? Eh?" His pale, short-sighted eyes peered at the visitor. "Andre!" said he, between surprise and sternness; and the colour deepened in his great pink face.
Benoit, with his back to his master, deliberately winked and grinned at Andre-Louis to encourage him not to be put off by any apparent hostility on the part of his godfather. That done, the intelligent old fellow discreetly effaced himself.
"What do you want here?" growled M. de Kercadiou.
"No more than to kiss your hand, as Benoit has told you, monsieur my godfather," said Andre-Louis submissively, bowing his sleek black head.
"You have contrived without kissing it for two years."