"I don't know," answered the abbé, with evident sincerity; "I was not noticing."
Pierrot did not intend to give in.
"Oh, well, Bijou noticed them anyhow, for I can tell you she did look at them, and with eyes as sharp as needles, too; they shone like anything."
"I?" she exclaimed, her pretty face turning suddenly red. "It was your fancy, Pierrot; I never saw anything. I was much too frightened."
"Frightened of what?" asked the marchioness.
"Why, of being upset, grandmamma. Pierrot is right about that; we were nearly upset."
"He is right, too, in saying that it was an insane idea to want to go with a carriage and four horses down a wretched little street like that; however could you have had such an idea?"
Bijou glanced at Jeanne Dubuisson, who, with her eyes fixed on the carpet, had turned very red, too, and was listening to the discussion without taking any part in it.
"Oh, really, I don't know. I think it was M. de Clagny telling me that his horses were so well in hand that he could make them turn round on a plate. And so, as the Rue Rabelais is rather narrow and winding, I said: 'I am sure you could not go along Rue Rabelais.'"
"No!" protested Pierrot, "it was not quite like that. You said, 'Let us go down Rue Rabelais, I should like to see it.' And, then, as he hesitated—for we may as well give him credit for having hesitated—you stuck to it as hard as you could."