"So here you are," she screamed. I declare I thought she was going to bite me. "Oh-h-h, you and your fine master, that come here and devour our substance and never pay one sou, but bring ruin to the house! Now, go you straight in there and let them squeeze your throat awhile, and see how you like it yourself!"
She swept me across the passage like a whirlwind, opened the door, shoved me in, and banged it after me before I could collect my senses.
The room was small; it was very well filled up by a bureau, a strong box, a table, two chairs, three soldiers, one innkeeper, and myself.
The bureau stood by the window, with Maître Menard's account-books on it. Opposite was the table, with a captain of dragoons on it. Of his two men, one took the middle of the room, amusing himself with the windpipe of Maître Menard; the other was posted at the door. I was shot out of Mme. Menard's grasp into his, and I found his the gentler of the two.
"I say I know not where he went," Maître Menard was gasping, black in the face from the dragoon's attentions. "He did not tell—I have no notion. Ah—" The breath failed him utterly, but his eyes, bloodshot and bulging, rolled toward me.
"What now?" the captain cried, springing to his feet. "Who are you?"
He wore under his breastplate what I took to be the uniform of the city guards. I had seen the like on the officer of the gate the night I entered Paris. He was a young man of a decidedly bourgeois appearance, as if he were not much, outside of his uniform.
"My name is Félix Broux," I said. "I came to pay a bill—"
"His servant," Maître Menard contrived to murmur, the dragoon allowing him a breath.
"Oh, you are the Comte de Mar's servant, are you? Where have you left your master?"