The courtyard swarmed with students, and Gaston Latour stood solemnly directing the devilries, his pale face more than usually tricked with gloom, his dreamy poetic eyes dark with melancholy, his lips sounding blood-curdling ear-splitting blares upon his hunting-horn, regardless of all the municipal laws against the use of the same except at public festivals. The place was astir with chatter and laughter and fool’s play and the coming and going of feet.
In the midst of the ferment, Horace and others were securing his baggage to a handcart, the embarrassed porter standing to one side, his hands itching to do the roping.
A loud blare from Latour’s hunting-horn—and there was silence.
Horace strode up to the fat concierge, who stood on the steps with her three small children, the better to see the sights. He lifted each of the little ones, gave them a hug, and setting them down on the steps again, slipped a large silver piece into the small fingers. He took off his hat, and kissed the jolly old woman upon the cheek before them all, and slipped a hundred-franc note into her rough toil-worn hand. The little ones began to cry, and the concierge, the tears in her eyes, told them not to be stupid.
Horace patted them on the head:
“I’m coming back to play with you, you lazy little rascals,” said he; and putting on his hat, he pulled it well over his eyes.
He strode over to the handcart, and at a sign from him, they seized the porter and hove his expostulating bulk a-top of the baggage, where he was compelled to sit for the remainder of the journey across Paris to the railway-station of the north, in embarrassed discomfort; and Horace getting between the shafts, a bevy of students set the light rattling affair moving on clattering wheels, and the noisy party, pushing, pulling, and hauling and bawling, marched out of the courtyard in escort amidst the waving of handkerchiefs from windows and the last farewells.
A fussy burgess, put to the wall with some indignity by the stream of careless students, went up to a group of police and reminded them that the hunting-horn was not allowed to be blown in Paris except on certain high festivals.
His venom was wasted.
The police shrugged amused shoulders: