For himself, he was no speaker at all; he could only do his duty and love his people. So he had declared over and over again, and the look in his eyes said the same now. Madame's eyes were shining with tears. This admiration of her was too real to be doubted. "And yet--and yet"--she said, with a hand in the Cure's and the avocat's, drawing them near her--"a heretic, a heretic, my dear friends! How should I stand in your hearts if I were only of your faith? Or is it so that you yearn over the lost sheep, more than over the ninety and nine of the fold?" There was a real moisture in her eyes, and in her own heart she wondered, this fresh and venturing spirit, if she cared for them as they seemed to care for her--for she felt she had an inherent strain of the actress temperament, while these honest provincials were wholly real. But if she made them happy by her gaiety, what matter! The tears dried, and she flashed a malicious look at the young Seigneur, as though to say: "You had your chance, and you made nothing of it, and these simple gentlemen have done the gracious thing." Perhaps it was a liberal interpretation of his creed which prompted the Cure to add with a quaint smile: "'Thou art not far from the Kingdom,' my daughter." The avocat, who had no vanity, hastened to add to his former remarks, as if he had been guilty of an oversight: "Dear madame, you have flattered my poor gleanings in history; I am happy to tell you that there is here another and a better pilot in that sea. It is Monsieur Valmond," he added, his voice chirruping in his pleasure. "For Napoleon--" "Ah, Napoleon--yes, Napoleon?" she said, turning to Valmond, with a look half of interest, half of incredulity. "--For Napoleon is, through him, a revelation," the avocat went on. "He fills in the vague spaces, clears up mysteries of incident, and gives, instead, mystery of character." "Indeed," she added, still incredulous, but interested in this bizarre figure who had so worked upon her old friend, interested because she had a keen scent for mystery, and instinctively felt it here before her. Like De la Riviere, she perceived a strange combination of the gentleman and--something else; but, unlike him, she saw also a light in the face and eyes that might be genius, poetry, adventure. For the incongruities, what did they matter to her? She wished to probe life, to live it, to race the whole gamut of inquiry, experiences, follies, loves, and sacrifices, to squeeze the orange dry, and then to die while yet young, having gone the full compass, the needle pointing home. She was as broad as sumptuous in her nature; so what did a gaucherie matter? or a dash of the Oriental in a citizen of the Occident?