'Where can we go?' asked Prouane, who listened with an expression of stupefaction. 'We are here, sir, and we have got to stop here. We must be somewhere.'
'Yes, that's true,' said Madame Chanteau, bringing the discussion to an end. 'And wherever you are, here or elsewhere, there will always be trouble——We are just going to bed. Good-night. To-morrow it will be light.'
The man went off bowing, and they heard Véronique bolt the door behind him. They took their candles and gave a parting caress to Matthew and Minouche, who both slept in the kitchen. Lazare collected his music together, and Madame Chanteau put the scrip in its greasy covers beneath her arm, and also took from the table Davoine's balance-sheet, which her husband had forgotten. It was a heart-breaking paper, and the sooner it was put out of sight the better.
'We are going to bed, Véronique,' she cried. 'You need not wander up and down at this time of night.' But, hearing nothing save a grunt in the kitchen, she added in lower tones:
'What is the matter with her? I haven't brought a baby home for her to wean!'
'Leave her alone,' said Chanteau. 'She has her whims, you know. Well! we are all four here: so good-night!'
He himself slept on the ground floor, in a room on the other side of the passage. This arrangement had been made so that, when he was suffering from an attack of gout, he might be readily wheeled in his arm-chair either to table or to the terrace. He opened the door, and then stood still for a moment. His legs were very heavy, as at the approach of a fresh attack, of which, indeed, the stiffness of his joints had been giving him warning since the previous day. Plainly enough, he had acted very foolishly in eating that foie gras. The consciousness of his error made him feel anything but happy.
'Good-night,' he repeated in a mournful voice. 'You others can always sleep. Good-night, my little dear. Have a good long rest; you want it at your age.'
'Good-night, uncle,' said Pauline in reply, as she kissed him. Then the door closed. Madame Chanteau went upstairs first with the little girl. Lazare followed behind.
'Well, for my part, I shan't want anyone to rock me to sleep to-night,' said the old lady, 'that's quite certain. And I don't at all object to that uproar. I find it lulling. When I was in Paris I quite missed the shaking of my bed.'