"We shall see!"
Pushing the youth before him, he signed to the count to go inside his room, and, following himself, shut the door and double-locked it.
We withdrew in silence, Hippolyte, myself and the other spectators of that curious scene. Adolphe returned at the end of a quarter of an hour. He looked so crestfallen that we dared not question him for details. We went to bed in ignorance of the cause of all the disturbance.
But after Hippolyte had fallen asleep de Leuven came to me and told me the whole story. This was what had happened.
As I have said above, Adolphe had written the wonderful quatrain in Louise's album that morning. When it was finished he left the young lady's room as fast as possible. Towards four o'clock, Adolphe, who had not been able to contain the news, drew his father aside and repeated his quatrain to him.
M. de Ribbing listened gravely until the last syllable of the fourth line, and then he said—
"Say it over again, please."
Adolphe repeated it obediently:—
"Pourquoi dans la froide Ibérie,
Louise, ensevelir de si charmants attraits?
Les Russes, en quittant notre belle patrie,
Nous juraient cependant une éternelle paix!"
"There is but one slip," then said M. de Ribbing.