toward
herself.

This removal, which had rendered Buvat so proud, was received by
Bathilde as an amusement, which might help her to pass these last
moments of suspense; but when she found that Mademoiselle de Launay
wished to retain her longer, when, according to her calculation, Raoul
would return, she cursed the instant when the abbe had taken her to
Sceaux, and would certainly have refused, if Madame de Maine herself had
not interposed. It was impossible to refuse a person who, according to
the ideas of the time, from the supremacy of her rank, had almost a
right to command this service; but as she would have reproached herself
eternally if Raoul had returned in her absence, and in returning had
found her window closed, she had, as we have seen, insisted on returning
to study the cantata, and to explain to Buvat what had passed. Poor
Bathilde! she had invented two false pretexts, to hide, under a double
veil, the true motive of her return.

If Buvat had been proud when Bathilde was employed to draw the costumes
for the fete, he was doubly so when he found that she was destined to
play a part in it. Buvat had constantly dreamed of Bathilde's return to
fortune, and to that social position of which her parents' death had
deprived her, and all that brought her among the world in which she was
born appeared to him a step toward this inevitable and happy result.
However, the three days which he had passed without seeing her appeared
to him like three centuries. At the office it was not so bad, though
every one could see that some extraordinary event had happened; but it
was when he came home that poor Buvat found himself so miserable.

The first day he could not eat, when he sat down to that table where,
for thirteen years, he had been accustomed to see Bathilde sitting
opposite to him. The next day, when Nanette reproached him, and told him
that he was injuring his health, he made an effort to eat; but he had
hardly finished his meal when he felt as if he had been swallowing lead,
and was obliged to have recourse to the most powerful digestives to help
down this unfortunate dinner. The third day Buvat did not sit down to
table at all, and Nanette had the greatest trouble to persuade him to
take some broth, into which she declared she saw two great tears fall.
In the evening Bathilde returned, and brought back his sleep and his
appetite.

Buvat, who for three nights had hardly slept, and for three days had
hardly eat