Goulard left the little group of young ladies, in which, besides Cecile and Ernestine, were Mademoiselle Berton, daughter of the tax-collector, – an insignificant young person who played the part of satellite to Cecile, – and Mademoiselle Herbelot, sister of the second notary of Arcis, an old maid of thirty, soured, affected, and dressed like all old maids; for she wore, over a bombazine gown, an embroidered fichu, the corners of which, gathered to the front of the bodice, were knotted together after the well-known fashion under the Terror.
“Julien,” said the sub-prefect to his valet, who was waiting in the antechamber, “you who served six years at Gondreville ought to know how a count’s coronet is made.”
“Yes, monsieur; it has pearls on its nine points.”
“Very good. Go to the Mulet, and try to clap your eye on the tilbury of the gentleman who is stopping there, and then come and tell me what is painted on it. Do your business thoroughly, and bring me all the gossip of the inn. If you see the little groom, ask him at what hour to-morrow his master can receive the sub-prefect – in case you find the nine pearls. Don’t drink, don’t gossip yourself, and come back quickly; and as soon as you get back let me know it by coming to the door of the salon.”
“Yes, monsieur.”
The Mulet inn, as we have already said, stands on the square, at the opposite corner to the garden wall of the Marion estate on the other side of the road leading to Brienne. Therefore the solution of the problem could be rapid. Antonin Goulard returned to his place by Cecile to await results.
“We talked so much about the stranger yesterday that I dreamed of him all night,” said Madame Mollot.
“Ha! ha! do you still dream of unknown heroes, fair lady?” said Vinet.
“You are very impertinent; if I chose I could make you dream of me,” she retorted. “So this morning when I rose – ”
It may not be useless to say that Madame Mollot was considered a clever woman in Arcis; that is, she expressed herself fluently and abused that advantage. A Parisian, wandering by chance into these regions, like the Unknown, would have thought her excessively garrulous.
“ – I was, naturally, making my toilet, and as I looked mechanically about me – ”
“Through the window?” asked Antonin.
“Certainly; my dressing-room opens on the street. Now you know, of course, that Poupart has put the stranger into one of the rooms exactly opposite to mine – ”
“One room, mamma!” interrupted Ernestine. “The count occupies three rooms! The little groom, dressed all in black, is in the first. They have made a salon of the next, and the Unknown sleeps in the third.”
“Then he has half the rooms in the inn,” remarked Mademoiselle Herbelot.
“Well, young ladies, and what has that to do with his person?” said Madame Mollot, sharply, not pleased at the interruption. “I am talking of the man himself – ”
“Don’t interrupt the orator,” put in Vinet.
“As I was stooping – ”
“Seated?” asked Antonin.
“Madame was of course as she naturally would be, – making her toilet and looking at the Mulet,” said Vinet.
In the provinces such jokes are prized, for people have so long said everything to each other that they have recourse at last to the sort of nonsense our fathers indulged in before the introduction of English hypocrisy, – one of those products against which custom-houses are powerless.
“Don’t interrupt the orator,” repeated Cecile Beauvisage to Vinet, with whom she exchanged a smile.
“My eyes involuntarily fell on the window of the room in which the stranger had slept the night before. I don’t know what time he went to bed, although I was awake till past midnight; but I have the misfortune to be married to a man who snores fit to crack the planks and the rafters. If I fall asleep first, oh! I sleep so sound nothing can wake me; but if Mollot drops off first my night is ruined – ”
“Don’t you ever go off together?” said Achille Pigoult, joining the group. “I see you are talking of sleep.”
“Hush, naughty boy!” replied Madame Mollot, graciously.
“Do you know what they mean?” whispered Cecile to Ernestine.
“At any rate, he was not in at one o’clock in the morning,” continued Madame Mollot.
“Then he defrauded you! – came home without your knowing it!” said Achille Pigoult. “Ha! that man is sly indeed; he’ll put us all in his pouch and sell us in the market-place.”
“To whom?” asked Vinet.
“Oh! to a project! to an idea! to a system!” replied the notary, to whom Olivier smiled with a knowing air.
“Imagine my surprise,” continued Madame Mollot, “when I saw a stuff, a material, of splendid magnificence, most beautiful! dazzling! I said to myself, ‘That must be a dressing-gown of the spun-glass material I have sometimes seen in exhibitions of industrial products.’ So I fetched my opera-glass to examine it. But, good gracious! what do you think I saw? Above the dressing-gown, where the head ought to have been, I saw an enormous mass, something like a knee – I can’t tell you how my curiosity was excited.”
“I can conceive it,” said Antonin.
“No, you can not conceive it,” said Madame Mollot; “for this knee – ”
“Ah! I understand,” cried Olivier Vinet, laughing; “the Unknown was also making his toilet, and you saw his two knees.”
“No, no!” cried Madame Mollot; “you are putting incongruities into my mouth. The stranger was standing up; he held a sponge in his hand above an immense basin, and – none of your jokes, Monsieur Olivier! – it wasn’t his knee, it was his head! He was washing his bald head; he hasn’t a spear of hair upon it.”
“Impudent man!” said Antonin. “He certainly can’t have come with ideas of marriage in that head. Here we must have hair in order to be married. That’s essential.”
“I am therefore right in saying that our Unknown visitor must be fifty years old. Nobody ever takes to a wig before that time of life. After a time, when his toilet was finished, he opened his window and looked out; and then he wore a splendid head of black hair. He turned his eyeglass full on me, – for by that time, I was in my balcony. Therefore, my dear Cecile, you see for yourself that you can’t take that man for the hero of your romance.”
“Why not? Men of fifty are not to be despised, if they are counts,” said Ernestine.
“Heavens! what has age to do with it?” said Mademoiselle Herbelot.
“Provided one gets a husband,” added Vinet, whose cold maliciousness made him feared.
“Yes,” replied the old maid, feeling the cut, “I should prefer a man of fifty, indulgent, kind, and considerate, to a young man without a heart, whose wit would bite every one, even his wife.”
“This is all very well for conversation,” retorted Vinet, “but in order to love
