It was one o'clock, and the last of the wedding parties had swept gaily
out of the great _salle_ of the Falaise town hall and so to the
Cathedral across the market place.
Jacques de Wissant, with a feeling of relief, took off his tricolor
badge of office. With the instinctive love of order which was
characteristic of the man, he gathered up the papers that were spread on
the large table and placed them in neat piles before him. Through the
high windows, which by his orders had been prised open, for it was
intensely hot, he could hear what seemed an unwonted stir outside. The
picturesque town was full of strangers; in addition to the usual
holiday-makers from the neighbourhood, crowds of Parisians had come down
to spend the Feast of the Assumption by the sea.
The Mayor of Falaise liked to hear this unwonted stir and movement, for
everything that affected the prosperity of the town affected him very
nearly; but he was constitutionally averse to noise, and just now he
felt very tired. The varied emotions which had racked him that morning
had drained him of his vitality; and he thought with relief that in a
few moments he would be in the old-fashioned restaurant just across the
market place, where a table was always reserved for him when his town
house happened to be shut up, and where all his tastes and dietetic
fads--for M. de Wissant had a delicate digestion--were known.
He took up his tall hat and his lemon-coloured gloves--and then a look
of annoyance came over his weary face, for he heard the swinging of a
door. Evidently his clerk was coming back to ask some stupid question.
He always found it difficult to leave the town hall at the exact moment
he wished to do so; for although the officials dreaded his cold
reprimands, they were far more afraid of his sudden hot anger if
business of any importance were done without his knowledge and sanction.
But this time it was not his clerk who wished to intercept the mayor on
his way out to _déjeuner_; it was the chief of the employés in the
telephone and telegraph department of the building, a forward, pushing
young man whom Jacques de Wissant disliked.
"M'sieur le maire?" and then he stopped short, daunted by the mayor's
stern look of impatient fatigue. "Has m'sieur le maire heard the news?"
The speaker gathered up courage; it is exciting to be the bearer of
news, especially of ill news.