It was settled under the drollest of conditions.
They were dining at the house of a man named Hutin, where all the diligences stop on their way between Laon and Paris. They made Hiraux so tipsy that he neither knew what he was doing, nor what was done to him. They undressed him and, with only his drawers and shirt on, they bundled him under the box of the diligence, among the trunks, portmanteaus and hat-boxes.
Of course they did not leave a single farthing on him—where would the fun have been if Hiraux had had money?
Hiraux came to his senses in Paris. The conductor was completely ignorant of the joke, and was therefore quite as astonished to find Hiraux there as Hiraux was himself. Hiraux was greatly embarrassed at first at finding himself dressed only in his shirt and pants, in the courtyard among all the diligences; but, being a man of resource, he bethought him of a nephew, named Camusat,—a good, excellent fellow, who has since been and still is my friend. He called a cab, got in, and cried out through the top:—
"To M. Camusat at the Rapée!" Hiraux remembered his nephew's address, so he was able to drive straight there: I am sure I should have been too much embarrassed to have remembered it, in like circumstances.
Camusat was long and thin like his uncle; he provided him with coat, trousers and waistcoat; then he lent him twenty francs to buy me a violin and fifteen francs for the return journey.
With the fifteen francs Hiraux brought me back a violin rather worn at the neck, but quite sound in all its essential organs.
I could make a book out of Hiraux's adventures, if I liked, and quite as entertaining as many books I know. But I will restrict myself to one last instance, the saddest of them all.
At the end of three years' lessons under Hiraux, I could not even tune my violin!