He replied:
“It was in order not to annoy you, not to give you pain. Listen, I'm going to see you home. You will be very sensible, very nice; you will remain quietly waiting for me in bed, and I'll come back as soon as it's over.”
She murmured:
“Yes, but you will not begin over again?”
“No, I swear to you!”
He turned towards M. Saval, who had at last hooked on the chandelier:
“My dear friend, I am coming back in five minutes. If anyone arrives in my absence, do the honors for me, will you not?”
And he carried off Mathilde, who kept drying her eyes with her handkerchief as she went along.
Left to himself, M. Saval succeeded in putting everything around him in order. Then he lighted the wax-candles, and waited.
He waited for a quarter of an hour, half an hour, an hour. Romantin did not return. Then, suddenly there was a dreadful noise on the stairs, a song shouted out in chorus by twenty mouths and a regular march like that of a Prussian regiment. The whole house was shaken by the steady tramp of feet. The door flew open, and a motley throng appeared—men and women in file, two and two holding each other by the arm and stamping their heels on the ground to mark time, advanced into the studio like a snake uncoiling itself. They howled: