“Hush! keep quiet! He wants to kill me.”
Lisa was trying to get a sensible explanation from her, when Campardon appeared, looking very anxious. This incomprehensible uproar had disturbed Gasparine and him in their narrow bed. He had simply slipped on his trousers, and his fat face was swollen and covered with perspiration, whilst his yellow beard was quite flaccid and full of the white down of the pillow. He was all out of breath, and endeavoring to assume the assurance of a husband who sleeps alone.
“Is that you, Lisa?” called he from the drawing-room. “It’s absurd! How is it you’re not up-stairs?”
“I was afraid I had not fastened the door properly, sir; I could not sleep for thinking of it, so I came down to make sure. But it’s madame——”
The architect, seeing Berthe leaning against the wall of his anteroom with nothing but her chemise on, stood lost in amazement also. Berthe forgot how scantily she was clad.
“Oh! sir, keep me here,” repeated she. “He wants to kill me.”
“Who does?” asked he.
“My husband.”
The cousin now put in an appearance behind the architect. She had taken time to don a dress, and, her hair untidy and also full of down, her breast flat and hanging, her bones almost protruding through her garment, she brought with her the rancor arising from her interrupted repose. The sight of the young woman, of her plump and delicate nudity, only increased her ill-humor.
“Whatever have you done, then, to your husband?” she asked.