"To make me wait outside the door—like a dog!" muttered the tipsy servingman. "Me, the first lackey of my lord!"
Samuel, without paying the least attention to the impertinences of the lackey, read the letter of the Count of Plouernel by the light of his lamp, and then answered:
"Say to your master that I shall visit him to-morrow morning at his rooms. Your errand is done. You may leave."
"You won't give me a written answer?"
"No, the reply I have just given you will suffice."
Leaving the valet outside to fume his wrath away, Samuel refastened the wicket and returned to the room where he had left his wife. Bathsheba said to him, with some uneasiness:
"My friend, did I not hear a threatening voice?"
"It was a drunken lackey who brought me a letter from the Count of Plouernel."
"Another demand for a loan, I suppose?"
"Exactly. He has ordered me to undertake to secure for him the sum of 100,000 livres. He did not call on me direct for the loan, because he thought me too poor to be able to furnish it."