“It is unnecessary to send any,” Balzac replied. “I can come without them.”
“Ah, no, that is impossible. There will be a rehearsal one day, and none the next; and I never know until the morning at what hour a rehearsal is to take place. What is your address?”
But Balzac had not the least intention of telling where he lived, and either because he was playing hide-and-go-seek with his creditors, or else was at that time possessed of one of the inexplicable manias which caused him at times to keep his habitat a secret even from his most intimate friends, he refused flatly to impart the wished-for information.
“I do not see what we can do,” Lireux murmured helplessly, “unless we use a carrier pigeon.”
“I do,” replied Balzac, ever fertile in expedients. “Listen to me. Send a messenger up the Champs-Élysées with the notice every morning at nine o’clock. When he reaches the Arc de l’Étoile, let him turn to the left, and he will see a man beneath the twentieth tree, who will pretend to be looking up in the branches for a sparrow.”
“A sparrow?”
“A sparrow or any other bird.”
“My pigeon, perhaps.”
“Let me continue. Your messenger will approach my sentinel, and will say to him, ‘I have it.’ Thereupon my sentinel will reply, ‘Since you have it, what are you waiting for?’ Then your messenger will hand the notice to him, and immediately go away, without once looking behind him. I will attend to the rest.”
Lireux saw no objection to this fantastic whim, and contented himself by expressing the hope that if the twentieth tree should be destroyed by lightning M. de Balzac would see no insuperable objection to posting his sentinel at the twenty-first.