All at once the room was lit up. Two servants with lamps and candelabra appeared in the portière; and at the same moment the stranger finished by bringing down his fingers of steel with all his might in a dissonance, so startling, so unearthly, that the whole party sprang up.
'Out with the lamps!' shouted De Silvis.
'No, no!' shrieked Adèle; 'I dare not be in the dark. Oh, that dreadful man!'
Who was it? Yes, who was it? They involuntarily crowded round the host, and no one noticed the stranger slip out behind the servants.
De Silvis tried to laugh. 'I think it was the devil himself. Come, let us go to the opera.'
'To the opera! Not at any price!' exclaimed Louison. 'I will hear no music for a fortnight.'
'Oh, those truffles!' moaned Anatole.
The party broke up. They had all suddenly realized that they were strangers in a strange place, and each one wished to slip quietly home.
As the journalist conducted Mademoiselle Louison to her carriage, he said: 'Yes, this is the consequence of letting one's self be persuaded to dine with these semi-savages. One is never sure of the company he will meet.'
'Ah, how true! He quite spoiled my good spirits,' said Louison mournfully, turning her swimming eyes upon her companion. 'Will you accompany me to La Trinité? There is a low mass at twelve o'clock.'