[CHAPTER XIV]
THE COUNCILLOR FLACHSINFINGEN
The next day after Létorière's visit to Dr. Sphex, there was an extraordinary disturbance in the house of the Aulic Councillor Flachsinfingen. It was eleven o'clock in the morning; Madame Martha Flachsinfingen, a large woman, about forty years of age, lean, pale, and solemn, clothed in a long brown dress, with a starched neckerchief and a kind of loose sack of black velvet, was conversing with her husband, the councillor, a great abdominous, rubicund man, with a jolly and simple look.
Enveloped in a Chinese silk dressing-gown, his head covered with a night-cap bound with a flame-colored ribbon, the councillor seemed to listen to his wife with mingled deference and impatience.
She held in her scraggy hands a note which she was reading for the second time, with profound attention, weighing each word.
This note read thus:
"Monsieur the Marquis of Létorière will have the honor of presenting himself at noon, to-day, to Madame la Conseillère de Flachsinfingen, if she will deign to receive him."
After reading it, she repeated:
"'Will present himself to Madame la Conseillère.' What impudence!"
"But, Martha," said the councillor, humbly, "I don't see any impudence in . . ."