"I will tell his mother about it," said M. Deviolaine; "and if he continues possessed with this madness, send him to me. I will take him into my office and see that he doesn't go altogether stark staring mad."
And, indeed, my mother was told that very same night. When I returned from making up the portfolio, I found her in tears. M. Deviolaine had sent for her, and told her of all that had passed between M. Oudard and me that morning. Next day, the crime of which I had been guilty was public property throughout the offices. The sixty-three clerks of His Royal Highness never lost an opportunity of saying to each other as they met, "Have you heard what Dumas said to M. Oudard yesterday?"
And the clerk to whom the question was addressed would reply with either a Yes or a No. If he replied in the negative, the story was related with corrections, embellishments and exaggerations, that did the greatest credit to the imagination of my colleagues. During the whole day and for several days to follow, homeric laughter could be heard throughout the corridors of the Maison de la rue Saint-Honoré No. 216. There was one solitary book-keeping clerk who had only been engaged the previous day, and whom no one as yet knew, who did not laugh.
"Why," said the others to him, "you aren't laughing."
"No."
"Why don't you laugh?"
"Because it doesn't seem to me a laughing matter."
"What! Don't you think it a huge joke that Dumas said he would do better things than Casimir Delavigne?"
"In the first place, he did not say he would do better, he said he would do something different."