'Come along, my children, we must go upstairs. Let us leave madame to attend to her business.'
But the Trouches did not seem to hear; they appeared quite satisfied to remain in the passage, and they looked about them with a well-pleased air, as though the house had just been presented to them.
'It is very nice, very nice indeed, isn't it, Honoré?' Olympe said. 'After what Ovide wrote in his letters we scarcely expected to find it so nice as this, did we? But I told you that we ought to come here, and that we should do better here, and I am right, you see.'
'Yes, yes, we ought to be very comfortable here,' Trouche murmured. 'The garden, too, seems a pretty big one.'
Then addressing Mouret, he inquired:
'Do you allow your lodgers to walk in the garden, sir?'
Before Mouret had time to reply, Abbé Faujas, who had come downstairs, cried out in thundering tones:
'Come, Trouche! Come, Olympe!'
They turned round; and when they saw him standing on the steps looking terribly angry, they fairly quailed and meekly followed him. The Abbé went up the stairs in front of them without saying another word, without even seeming to observe the presence of Mouret, who stood gazing after the singular procession. Madame Faujas smiled at Marthe to take away the awkwardness of the situation as she brought up the rear.
Marthe then went out, and Mouret, left to himself, lingered a moment or two in the passage. Upstairs, on the second floor, doors were being noisily banged. Then loud voices were heard, and presently there came dead silence.