He went back into the hall, threw a challenging look at the usher and, recollecting the anxiety of his friend Cyprien, hurried down the steps.
“Well?” M. Raindal asked, with a suppliant movement of his jaw.
“Nothing!” Schleifmann replied. “Nothing!... The scoundrel would not do a thing!”
“I could have sworn to it!” Uncle Cyprien sighed, sliding down despairingly.
Schleifmann sat beside him in the carriage and asked, “Where shall I drive you, my dear Raindal? To the brasserie?”
“No, Schleifmann! I am not hungry.... Better take me home!”
They started. The Galician narrated his interview.
Uncle Cyprien listened in silence, his body crumpled up, his eyes dull, his face rigid. Schleifmann was still relating when they reached the pont des Saints-Pères.
“And I am not telling you a quarter of it, my friend!” the Galician concluded, still in the fever of his epopee. “I am forgetting some of it!... True, I did not obtain anything!... True, I lost a pupil!... But I have told them what I thought of them!”
“You may have told them what you thought of them, my friend,” Cyprien remarked judiciously. “But that does not prevent my being done for, the most undone of all men!”