One evening, returning from the Kursaal to the hotel with the Wassiliefs and Bolibine, after two hours of intoxicating music, the unfortunate man forgot all prudence, and the “Sonia, I love you,” which he had so long restrained, was uttered as he pressed the arm that rested on his own. She was not agitated. Perfectly pale, she gazed at him under the gas of the portico on which they had paused: “Then deserve me...” she said, with a pretty enigmatical smile, a smile that gleamed upon her delicate white teeth. Tartarin was about to reply, to bind himself by an oath to some criminal madness when the porter of the hotel came up to him:
“There are persons waiting for you, upstairs... some gentlemen... They want you.”
“Want me!.. Outre!.. What for?” And No. 1 of his folding series appeared before him: Tartarin captured, extradited... Of course he was frightened, but his attitude was heroic. Quickly detaching himself from Sonia: “Fly, save yourself!” he said to her in a smothered voice. Then he mounted the stairs as if to the scaffold, his head high, his eyes proud, but so disturbed in mind that he was forced to cling to the baluster.
As he entered the corridor, he saw persons grouped at the farther end of it before his door, looking through the keyhole, rapping, and calling out: “Hey! Tartarin...”
He made two steps forward, and said, with parched lips: “Is it I whom you are seeking, messieurs?”
“Te! pardi, yes, my president!.”
And a little old man, alert and wiry, dressed in gray, and apparently bringing on his coat, his hat, his gaiters and his long and pendent moustache all the dust of his native town, fell upon the neck of the hero and rubbed against his smooth fat cheeks the withered leathery skin of the retired captain of equipment.
“Bravida!.. not possible!.. Excourbaniès too!.. and who is that over there?..”
A bleating answered: “Dear ma-a-aster!..” and the pupil advanced, banging against the wall a sort of long fishing-rod with a packet at one end wrapped in gray paper, and oilcloth tied round it with string.
“Hey! vè! why it’s Pascalon... Embrace me, little one... What’s that you are carrying?.. Put it down...”