“Excellent! But your voice—how will you keep from being recognized by that?”
“Oh, that is my talent, my specialty! You know it very well, for you have been present at one of my performances.”
“True. I would have taken my oath that there were a dozen of you in the box. I must see you this evening, by the way; I shall go and sit with the audience, but I don’t want to know the piece beforehand. Well, good luck to you, my boy! I’m going to try and extract some explanation out of old Sten about my apparition. But what is that cypress-bough that you are putting on the frame of the Gray Lady’s picture?”
“That is another thing that I forgot to tell you. M. Stenson brought it. I don’t know what he meant to do with it, but he threw it down at my feet; and whatever his intention was, I am going to make a memorial offering of it to this poor Baroness Hilda.”
“You may be sure, Christian, that this was also the intention of the good old man. It is either to-morrow or to-day—stay a moment; I have a good memory for dates—Mon Dieu! this very day is the anniversary of the death of the baroness. That accounts for Sten’s prevailing on himself to come here, to offer some prayer or other.”
“Then,” said Christian, as he detached the little slip of parchment which M. Goefle had taken for a ribbon from the branch around which it was rolled, “see if you can explain the verses of the Bible that are written on that. My time is so short that I will go without waiting now.”
“Stay,” said M. Goefle, who had put on his spectacles to read the slip of parchment; “if you go as far as to the new chateau, and find Master Nils, who has not come back here to attend to my lunch, will you do me the pleasure to take him by one ear and bring him along with you?”
Christian promised to bring him, alive or dead, but he did not have to go very far to find both his own valet and M. Goefle’s. He went into the stable, where it occurred to him to look before leaving the court, and there he found Puffo and Nils snoring side by side, and both of them equally drunk. Ulphilas, who could bear liquor better, was walking backward and forward about the place, very well satisfied at not being left alone at nightfall, and from time to time casting a fraternal eye upon the two comrades of his revel. Christian saw how things had gone. Nils, who understood both Swedish and Dalecarlian, had acted as interpreter between the two drunkards, and their growing friendship had been cemented in the cellar. The poor little valet did not require much of a trial to become quite oblivious of his master, even supposing that he had been distressing himself particularly about him before. Now, he was lying warm and snug in the dry moss which they use for litter in that country, with cheeks red and nose on fire, and, as well as Puffo, had forgotten all about the cares of this vile world.
“Very good,” said M. Goefle to Christian, who met him in the court, and brought him to see this touching spectacle; “as long as the little rascal is not ill, I am very well satisfied not to have to wait upon him.”
“But what am I to do, M. Goefle?” said Christian, in a great deal of perplexity; “I can’t do without this beast of a Puffo. I have shaken him, but in vain. He’s dead for the present. I know him; he won’t be himself for ten or twelve hours.”