"Ah! good day, Dumas!" he said to me; "that's just like you! I recognise you well enough! It is just like you to come!"
I looked at the king and, for the life of me, I could not tell what he was alluding to. Then, as he began laughing, and all the good courtiers round imitated his example, I smiled in company with everybody else, and went on my way. In the next room where my steps led me I found Vatout, Oudard, Appert, Tallencourt, Casimir Delavigne and a host of my old comrades. They had seen me through the half-open door and they, too, were all laughing. This universal hilarity began to confuse me.
"Ah!" said Vatout. "Well, you have a nerve, my friend!"
"What do you mean?"
"Why, you have just paid the king a New Year's visit in a dress of dissous."
By dissous understand dix sous (ten sous).
Vatout was an inveterate punster.
"I do not understand you," I said, very seriously.
"Come now," he said. "You aren't surely going to try to make us believe that you did not know the king's order!"