"What?" asked the abbe.
"That he would take the portrait of our Athenais."
The chevalier awoke from his reverie, as a traveler, asleep on the grass, feels a serpent glide up to him, and instinctively understands that a great danger threatens him.
"Abbe!" cried he, in a bewildered manner, "no folly!"
"Oh! what is the matter with your pupil?" asked Madame Denis, quite frightened.
Happily, at the moment when the abbe was seeking a subterfuge, the door opened, and the two young ladies entered blushing, and, stepping from right to left, each made a low courtesy.
"Well!" said Madame Denis, affecting an air of severity, "what is this? Who gave you permission to leave your room?"
"Mamma," replied a voice which the chevalier recognized, by its shrill tones, for that of Mademoiselle Emilie, "we beg pardon if we have done wrong, and are willing to return."
"But, mamma," said another voice, which the chevalier concluded must belong to Mademoiselle Athenais, "we thought that it was agreed that we were to come in at dessert."
"Well, come in, since you are here; it would be ridiculous now to go back. Besides," added Madame Denis, seating Athenais between herself and Brigaud, and Emilie between herself and the chevalier, "young persons are always best—are they not, abbe?—under their mother's wing."