“This is all very well, my dear Baptiste,” said I to him, when we were alone, “but thou canst go to sleep, I shall undress myself as I have been in the habit of doing all my life.”
Baptiste bade me good-night, and left me. It was only ten o’clock. I had no desire to sleep so soon, so I set myself to examine the furniture and pictures in my room, when my eyes fell upon the repast which had been served near the fire-place, and the three loaves appeared before me in all their mysterious symmetry. They were passably large and arranged in the centre of the Japanese waiter in a pretty basket of old Saxony, with a handsome silver salt-cellar in the midst, and three damask napkins placed at intervals around it.
“What the deuce does this mean?” I asked myself, “and why has this vulgar accessory of my supper, the bread, tormented my aged hostess to such an extent?” “Why were three loaves so expressly ordered? Why not four! Why not ten? Since they take me for an ogre! Upon my word! This is really a bounteous feast, and here are some bottles of wine whose etiquettes promise well. But why three carafes of water? Here again it becomes mysterious and absurd. Does this good old countess imagine that I am triple, or that I carry two guests in my valise?” I was musing upon this enigma when some one knocked at the door of the ante-chamber.
“Come in,” cried I, without moving, thinking that Baptiste had forgotten something. What was my surprise to behold the powerful Zéphyrine in her night cap, holding a candle in one hand and, with a finger placed upon her lips, advancing towards me on tip-toe as if she entertained the absurd idea of not letting the floor creak under her elephantine tread. I certainly grew paler than I had done in preparing to meet the youthful Madame d’Ionis. The spectacle of this voluminous apparition was truly appalling!
“Fear nothing, sir,” said the good old maid ingeniously, as if she had divined my terror. “I come to explain about the extraordinary—the three carafes, and the three loaves.”
“Ah! willingly,” answered I, offering her an armchair, “I was really considerably perplexed.”
“As housekeeper,” said Zéphyrine, refusing to be seated and still holding her candle, “I should be very much mortified if monsieur imagined that I wished to perpetrate a poor joke. I would not permit myself—and still I come to ask monsieur to connive at it, so that my mistress may not be displeased.”
“Go on, Mademoiselle Zéphyrine, I am not of a disposition to be vexed at a joke, above all, when it is an amusing one.”
“Oh! mon Dieu, no, sir, there is nothing amusing about it, but neither is there anything disagreeable. It is only this, madame the dowager countess is very—her head is very—.” Zéphyrine stopped short; she either loved or feared the dowager and could not make up her mind to criticise her. Her embarrassment was comical, for it showed itself in a childish smile curling around the corners of a decidedly small and toothless mouth which caused her round, chubby face, minus forehead and chin, to appear still larger. You might have mistaken it for the full moon grimacing as it is represented on almanacs. Her breathless little voice, and her peculiar lisp had the effect of causing her to appear so extraordinary that I did not dare to look her in the face for fear of losing my countenance.
“Let me see,” said I, endeavoring to encourage her in her revelations, “madame the dowager countess is something of a tease; she likes to amuse herself at the expense of others!”