‘Will make you laugh yet,’ said the abbé. ‘And now good-night, or rather good-bye: I start early to-morrow morning, and we may not meet again.’
He promised to forward my effects to Dinant, and we parted.
‘Monsieur will have a single bed?’ said the housemaid, in answer to my summons.
‘Yes,’ said I, with a muttering I fear very like an oath.
Morning broke in through the half-closed curtains, with the song of birds and the ripple of the gentle river. A balmy gentle air stirred the leaves, and the sweet valley lay in all its peaceful beauty before me.
‘Well, well,’ said I, rubbing my eyes, ‘it was a queer adventure; and there’s no saying what might have happened had they been only ten minutes later. I’d give a napoleon to know what Laura thinks of it now. But I must not delay here—the very villagers will laugh at me.’
I ate my breakfast rapidly and called for my bill. The sum was a mere trifle, and I was just adding something to it when a knock came to the door.
‘Come in,’ said I, and the père entered.
‘How sadly unfortunate,’ began he, when I interrupted him at once, assuring him of his mistake—telling him that we were no runaway couple at all, had not the most remote idea of being married, and in fact owed our whole disagreeable adventure to his ridiculous misconception.
‘It’s very well to say that now,’ growled out the père, in a very different accent from his former one. ‘You may pretend what you like, but’—and he spoke in a determined tone—‘you’ll pay my bill.’