“O-ha, mamselle! Je vous trouve, je vous salue! A la fin çà, çà, çà!
“‘Be’old the mountaineer,
He sik for edelweiss,
I have found my dear
Very high and very nice—çà, çà, çà!’”
He flicked off his cap—with a grin that showed, though against the flour, a set of perfect teeth—and in three strides was at the window, his eyes and huge white face above the level of the sill. Even in the instant, as if the former were a cypher momentarily isolated for my reading, I understood, and was stricken to stone.
“The graveyard!” whispered the pierrot in that instant: “be at the wall over against it at ten o’clock to-night”—and reeled away, to a pantomime of grins and pirouettes, as the lodge-keeper came raging round the corner in pursuit.
“O que nenni dà!” cried the intruder, twisting and turning and affecting to bend with laughter. “O, madame! O, fie! I am very honourable z’jentlemans. Wat, I say! I make you good proposals to marry. I display my parts, v’là!”
He contorted himself, with absurd coquetry. “Wat!” he protested, pausing; “madame declines of the ravishment? She does not move herself to fly with me? Vair well”— He pretended of a sudden to espy his pursuer, and pressing his cap to his breast, waltzed up to him.
“Hey, my little fellow,” he cried (the lodge-keeper was at least as big as Daniel Lambert), “it is for you, then. You know the best wat is good. I will not abduct madame: I will not marry at all. It is vair much satisfaction. You see me dance, hein? Come on, jolly garçon!—