“Ask her some questions, my dear. You should ask her more questions and write more in your little book. It will make a good impression.”
And although he saw from the glint of shrewd humour in the sharp eyes of La Marquise that none of this clumsy by-play had been lost on her, and that the other woman’s design was perfectly apparent to her, he responded dutifully, if awkwardly, asking respectful questions about the age and history of the château, the extent of its estate, and so on. At length, emboldened by the modest success of these beginnings and feeling that a clever young journalist should display an intelligent curiosity about the current affairs of the nation to which he is a visitor, he asked a question about the government of the period, of which Herriot was the leader and which was dominantly socialist.
It was, he saw, an unfortunate move; the Countess poked him sharply with a warning finger, but it was too late. He saw instantly that his question had produced a bad impression on La Marquise: for the first time, her manner of amiable and cordial friendliness vanished, her face hardened, there was an angry glint in her shrewd eyes, and in a moment she said harshly, and in a tone of arrogant impatience:
“I know nozzing about zose pipple! I pay no attention to anys’ing zey say! Zey are fools! fools!” she cried violently. “You must not believe anys’ing zey say! Zose men are traitors!… Charlatans!… Zey are ze pipple who have ruined and betrayed France!” In her agitation she got up and walked across the room. “Here!” she cried, picking up a newspaper on a table and returning with it. “Here is what you should reat if you want ze trut!” She thrust a copy of L’Action Française into his hands. “Zat paper—and zat alone—will tell you ze trut about ze way s’ings are in France today. Ah, monsieur!” she cried earnestly, “you do not know—ze world does not know—no one outside of France can know ze trut, because zese wretched men control ze press—and make it print vatever lies zey tell it to. But you reat zis, monsieur—you reat zis,” she struck the paper with the back of her hand as she spoke, “and you will get ze trut! Ah, zat man!” she said with a grim chuckle of admiration. “Ze rédacteur—ze—vat you say?—ze editor of zat paper, Léon Daudet—ah, zat man is right!” she said with a chuckle of satisfaction. “Zat man is sometimes coarse—he call zem bat names—he is not always très gentil—but,” again she chuckled grimly, “he iss right! He tells ze trut—he calls zem vat zey are—ze traitors and creeminals who’ave ruined France.” She was silent for a moment,
