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He shut the door behind him gently and remained between it and the screen. He had expected to be followed at once by Adèle. What could be detaining her? But he remembered the remarkable proportions of that suite of reception rooms. He had seen some apartments in Paris, but nothing quite so long as that. The old Marquis would no doubt conduct the little Madame Bubna to the very door of the anteroom. The ambassador of The Most Christian King owed that attention to the representative of His Apostolic Majesty and Commander-in-Chief of the Austrian troops. This was the exact form which his thought took. The Christian King, the Apostolic Majesty -- all those submerged heads were bobbing up out of the subsiding flood.
He pictured them to himself in their mental simplicity and with their grand air; the Marquis magnificent and ageing, and the dutiful daughter by his side with her radiant head and her divine form. It was impossible to believe that these two had also been submerged at one time.