On his entrance, as we have just remarked, he was greeted with mocking laughs and exclamations of—
"Here comes M. Segoffin. Ah, good day, M. Segoffin!" But without losing his habitual sang-froid in the least, he laid his umbrella and hat down on a chair, and, seizing the prettiest of his tormentors in his long arms, kissed her loudly on both cheeks in spite of her shrieks and spirited resistance. Well satisfied with this beginning, he was preparing to repeat the offence when Madame Roberts, seizing him by one of his coat-tails, exclaimed, indignantly:
"Segoffin, Segoffin! such behaviour is outrageous!"
"That which is done is done," said Segoffin, sententiously, passing his long, bony hand across his lips with an air of retrospective enjoyment, as the young sewing-woman quitted the room with her companions, all laughing like mad and exclaiming: "Good night, M. Segoffin, good night."
Left alone with the delinquent, Dame Roberts exclaimed:
"Would any one on earth but you coolly commit such enormities in the respectable household of a magistrate?"
"What on earth do you mean, I should like to know?"
"Why, hugging and kissing that girl right under my very nose when you are persecuting me with your declarations of love all the time."
"I do believe you're jealous!"
"Jealous! Get that idea out of your head as soon as possible. If I ever do marry again,—which God forbid!—it certainly will not be you I choose for a husband."