Master Lenfant was confused by this reply; but his native impudence soon regained the mastery.
"Fine customers, parbleu!" he answered, "this thief of a Guespin has got thirty francs of mine which I'll never see again."
"Who knows?" said Plantat, ironically. "Besides, you are going to make more than that to-night, there's so much company at the Orcival festival."
During this brief conversation, M. Lecoq entered the inn for his night-gown. His office being no longer a secret, he was not now welcomed as when he was taken for a simple retired haberdasher. Mme. Lenfant, a lady who had no need of her husband's aid to show penniless sots the door, scarcely deigned to answer him. When he asked how much he owed, she responded, with a contemptuous gesture, "Nothing." When he returned to the door, his night-gown in hand, M. Plantat said:
"Let's hurry, for I want to get news of our poor mayor."
The three hastened their steps, and the old justice of the peace, oppressed with sad presentiments, and trying to combat them, continued:
"If anything had happened at the mayor's, I should certainly have been informed of it by this time. Perhaps Laurence has written that she is ill, or a little indisposed. Madame Courtois, who is the best woman in the world, gets excited about nothing; she probably wanted to send her husband for Laurence at once. You'll see that it's some false alarm."
No; some catastrophe had happened. A number of the village women were standing before the mayor's gate. Baptiste, in the midst of the group, was ranting and gesticulating. But at M. Plantat's approach, the women fled like a troop of frightened gulls. The old man's unexpected appearance annoyed the placid Baptiste not a little, for he was interrupted, by the sudden departure of his audience, in the midst of a superb oratorical flight. As he had a great fear of M. Plantat, however, he dissimulated his chagrin with his habitual smile.
"Ah, sir," cried he, when M. Plantat was three steps off, "ah, what an affair! I was going for you—"
"Does your master wish me?"