Cabrion, a painter, formerly a tenant, had seen fit to make the porter a butt of the most audacious practical jokes, inundating him with caricatures, laughable labels, and startling appearances before his unexpectant appalled sight. Unfortunately, by a natural consequence of the rectitude of his judgment, not being able to comprehend practical jokes, Pipelet endeavored to find some reasonable motive for the outrageous conduct of Cabrion, and on this subject he posed himself with a thousand insoluble questions. Thus, sometimes, a new Paschal, he felt himself seized with a vertigo in trying to sound the bottomless abyss which the infernal genius of the painter had dug under his feet. How many times, in the overflowings of his imagination, he had been forced to commune within himself thanks to the frenzied skepticism of Madame Pipelet, who, only looking at facts, and disdaining to seek after causes, grossly considered the incomprehensible conduct of Cabrion toward Alfred as simple comicality.
Pipelet, a serious man, could not admit of such an interpretation; he groaned at the blindness of his wife; his dignity as a man revolted at the thought that he could be the plaything of a combination so vulgar as a lark! He was absolutely convinced that the unheard-of conduct of Cabriori concealed some mysterious plot under a frivolous appearance.
It was to solve this fatal problem that the man in the big hat exhausted his powerful logic. "I would sooner lay my head on the scaffold," said this austere man, who, as soon as he touched them, increased immensely the importance of any propositions. "I would sooner lay my head upon the scaffold than admit that, in the mere intention of a stupid pleasantry, Cabrion could be so obstinately exasperated against me; a farce is only played for the gallery. Now, in his last undertaking, this obnoxious creature had no witness; he acted alone and in obscurity, as always; he clandestinely introduced himself into the solitude of my lodge to deposit on my forehead a hideous kiss! I ask any disinterested person, for what purpose? It was not from bravado—no one saw him; it was not from pleasure—the laws of nature opposed it; it was not from friendship—I have but one enemy in the world—it is he. It must, then, be acknowledged that there is a mystery there which my reason cannot penetrate! Then to what does this diabolical plot, concerted and pursued with a persistence which alarms me, tend? That I cannot comprehend: it is this impossibility to raise the veil, which, by degrees, is undermining and consuming me."
Such were the painful reflections of Pipelet at the moment when we present him to our readers. The honest porter had just torn open his bleeding wounds, by carry—his hand mechanically to the fracture of his hat, when a piercing voice, coming from one of the upper stories of the house, made these words resound again: "Mr. Pipelet, quick! quick! come up! make haste!"
"I do not know that voice," said Alfred, after a moment of anxious listening, and he let his arm, inclosed in the boot he was mending, fall on his knees.
"Mr. Pipelet! make haste!" repeated the voice, in a pressing tone.
"That voice is completely strange to me. It is masculine; it calls me, that I can affirm. It is not a sufficient reason that I should abandon my lodge. Leave it—desert it in the absence of my wife—never!" cried Alfred, heroically, "never!"
"Mr. Pipelet," said the voice, "come up quick, Mrs. Pipelet is off in a swoon."
"Anastasia!" cried Alfred, rising from his seat: then be fell back again, saying to himself, "child that I am—it is impossible; my wife went out an hour ago. Yes, but might she not have returned without my seeing her? This would be rather irregular; but I must declare that it is possible."
"Mr. Pipelet, come up; I have your wife in my arms!"