Page 1085 - les-miserables

‘Here he is passing the night out again.’ Mademoiselle Gil-
lenormand had ascended to her chamber greatly puzzled,
and on the staircase had dropped this exclamation: ‘This
is too much!’—and this interrogation: ‘But where is it that
he goes?’ She espied some adventure of the heart, more or
less illicit, a woman in the shadow, a rendezvous, a mystery,
and she would not have been sorry to thrust her spectacles
into the affair. Tasting a mystery resembles getting the first
flavor of a scandal; sainted souls do not detest this. There is
some curiosity about scandal in the secret compartments
of bigotry.
So she was the prey of a vague appetite for learning a
history.
In order to get rid of this curiosity which agitated her a
little beyond her wont, she took refuge in her talents, and set
about scalloping, with one layer of cotton after another, one
of those embroideries of the Empire and the Restoration, in
which there are numerous cart-wheels. The work was clum-
sy, the worker cross. She had been seated at this for several
hours when the door opened. Mademoiselle Gillenormand
raised her nose. Lieutenant Theodule stood before her, mak-
ing the regulation salute. She uttered a cry of delight. One
may be old, one may be a prude, one may be pious, one may
be an aunt, but it is always agreeable to see a lancer enter
one’s chamber.
‘You here, Theodule!’ she exclaimed.
‘On my way through town, aunt.’
‘Embrace me.’
‘Here goes!’ said Theodule.

1085