“She told you that?”
“Word for word, my dear fellow! She cannot hear what we are saying, I hope?”
“How can she, when she is insensible?”
“Well, ask her yourself when she comes to, and if she does not tell you exactly to the letter what I have been telling you, call me a Turk, an infidel and a heretic.”
“Ah! these men! these men!” murmured the Bailiff.
“Yes, race of vipers!” continued my lord of Vez, “do you wish me to go on?”
“Yes, indeed!” said the little man, forgetting the scantiness of his attire in the interest excited in him by the Baron’s tale.
“ ‘But Madame,’ I said to my friend Madame Magloire, ‘How could you tell that he had the audacity to love you?’ ”
“Yes,” put in the Bailiff, “how did she find it out? I never noticed anything myself.”
“You would have been aware of it, my dear friend, if only you had looked under the table; but, fond of your dinner as you are, you were not likely to be looking at the dishes on the table and underneath it at the same time.”