Finally, he exclaimed unceremoniously, "C'est pien—that's all right," and disappeared.
They breathed again more freely. Hunger having reasserted itself, supper was ordered. It would take half an hour to prepare, so while two servants were apparently busied about it the travelers dispersed to look at their rooms. These were all together down each side of a long passage ending in a door with ground glass panels.
At last, just as they were sitting down to table, the innkeeper himself appeared. He was a former horse-dealer, a stout asthmatic man with perpetual wheezings and blowings and rattlings of phlegm in his throat. His father had transmitted to him the name of Follenvie.
"Mademoiselle Elizabeth Rousset?" he said.
Boule de Suif started and turned round. "That is my name."
"Mademoiselle, the Prussian officer wants to speak to you at once."
"To me?"
"Yes, if you really are Mademoiselle Elizabeth Rousset."
She hesitated, thought for a moment, and then declared roundly: "That may be, but I'm not going."
There was a movement round about her—everybody was much exercised as to the reason of this summons. The Count came over to her.