It seemed to me that I had but just closed my eyes, when I was waked by a hand upon my shoulder, and a voice calling me by my name. I started up to find the early sunshine pouring in at the window, and Franz Müller standing by my bedside.
"Tiens!" said he. "How lovely are the slumbers of innocence! I was hesitating, mon cher, whether to wake or sketch you."
I muttered something between a growl and a yawn, to the effect that I should have been better satisfied if he had left me alone.
"You prefer everything that is basely self-indulgent, young man," replied Müller, making a divan of my bed, and coolly lighting his pipe under my very nose. "Contrary to all the laws of bon-camaraderie, you stole away last night, leaving your unprotected friend in the hands of the enemy. And for what?--for the sake of a few hours' ignominious oblivion! Look at me--I have not been to bed all night, and I am as lively as a lobster in a lobster-pot."
"How did you get home?" I asked, rubbing my eyes; "and when?"
"I have not got home at all yet," replied my visitor. "I have come to breakfast with you first."
Just at this moment, the pendule in the adjoining room struck six.
"To breakfast!" I repeated. "At this hour?--you who never breakfast before midday!"
"True, mon cher; but then you see there are reasons. In the first place, we danced a little too long, and missed the last train, so I was obliged to bring the dear creatures back to Paris in a fiacre. In the second place, the driver was drunk, and the horse was groggy, and the fiacre was in the last stage of dilapidation. The powers below only know how many hours we were on the road; for we all fell asleep, driver included, and never woke till we found ourselves at the Barrière de l'Étoile at the dawn of day."
"Then what have you done with Madame Marotte and Mademoiselle Marie?"