Everything about him is attractive to me--and mysterious. At the sacristy door, I came across old La Pérouse. He said, a little sadly but without any trace of reproach: “You’ve almost forgotten me, I think.” I mentioned some kind of occupation or other as an excuse for having been so long without going to see him and promised to go the day after to-morrow. I tried to persuade him to come back with me to the reception, which the Azaïses were giving after the ceremony and to which I was invited; but he said he was in too sombre a mood and was afraid of meeting too many people to whom he ought to speak, and would not be able to. Pauline went away with George and left me with Olivier. “I trust him to your care,” she said, laughing; but Olivier seemed irritated and turned away his face. He drew me out into the street. “I didn’t know you knew the Azaïses so well.” He was very much surprised when I told him that I had boarded with them for two years. “How could you do that rather than live independently--anywhere else?” “It was convenient,” I answered vaguely, for I couldn’t say that at that time Laura was filling my thoughts and that I would have put up with the worst disagreeables for the pleasure of bearing them in her company. “And weren’t you suffocated in such a hole?” Then, as I didn’t answer: “For that matter, I can’t think how I bear it myself--nor why in the world I am there.... But I’m only a half-boarder. Even that’s too much.” I explained to him the friendship that had existed between his grandfather and the master of the “hole,” and that his mother’s choice was no doubt guided by that. “Oh well,” he went on, “I have no points of comparison; I dare say all these cramming places are the same, and, most likely, from what people say, the others are worse. I shouldn’t have gone there at all if I hadn’t had to make up the time I lost when I was ill. And now, for a long time past, I have only gone there for the sake of Armand.” Then I learnt that this young brother of Laura’s was his schoolfellow. I told Olivier that I hardly knew him. “And yet he’s the most intelligent and the most interesting of the family.” “That’s to say the one who interests you most.” “No, no, I assure you, he’s very unusual. If you like we’ll go and see him in his room. I hope he won’t be afraid to speak before you.” We had reached the pension. The Vedel-Azaïses had substituted for the traditional wedding breakfast a less costly tea. Pastor Vedel’s reception room and study had been thrown open to the guests. Only a few intimate friends were allowed into the pastoress’s minute private sitting-room; but in order to prevent it from being overrun, the door between it and the reception room had been locked--which made Armand answer, when people asked him how they could get to his mother: “Through the chimney!”