"Mon général, you will really make me quite ashamed if you do not allow me to make these inquiries as to Mlle. Alexandrine as a poor proof of my gratitude."
"Well, well; be it so. I will no longer contend with your generosity; and your devotion will be a sweet reward to me for considerations I have always mixed up in our transactions."
"Very good, general; and now we understand each other. Is there anything else I can do for you? You must be very uncomfortable here. I hope you are à la pistole (in a private room)?"
"Yes; I came just in time to get the only empty room,—the others are being repaired. I have made myself as comfortable as possible in my cell, and am not so very miserable. I have a stove and a very nice easy chair; I make three long meals a day, and my digestion is good; then I walk and go to sleep. Except my uneasiness about Alexandrine I have not so much to complain of."
"But for you who were such an epicure, general, the prison diet is very poor."
"Why, there is an excellent cookshop in my street, and I have a running account with him, and so every two days he sends me a very nice supply. And, by the way, I would get you to ask his wife—a nice little woman is Madame Michonneau—to put into the basket a bit of pickled thunny. It is in season now, and relishes one's wine."
"Capital idea!"
"And tell Madame Michonneau to send me a basket of various wines,—burgundy, champagne, and bordeaux,—like the last; she'll know what I mean. And tell her to put in two bottles of old cognac of 1817, and a pound of pure Mocha, fresh roasted and ground."
"I'll put down the date of the cognac, lest I should forget it," said Bourdin, taking a memorandum-book from his pocket.
"As you are writing, my good fellow, be so good as make a minute of my wish to have an eider-down quilt from my house."