The sound of the young lady’s sobs no sooner reached the ears of the secreted Count, than he started up, with the leathern cover still over his head and shoulders, and stood for a few minutes vainly endeavouring to extricate himself from beneath it.
Miss Chutney hearing the smothered exclamations of “tonnère!” and “parbleu!” that involuntarily escaped from the struggling Count, suddenly ceased her sobs, and turned round to see what was the matter, and no sooner did she set eyes on the ludicrous figure of the Frenchman, with his legs alone showing beneath the yellow cover, than she could not refrain from bursting, half hysterically, into a loud fit of laughter; and so irresistible was the impulse upon her—for the more the foreigner struggled and swore, the louder she laughed—that it was not until a sense of her position had forced itself upon her, and she had half bitten her lips through in dread of Mrs. Wewitz overhearing her, that the young lady was in any way able to control herself.
At length, however, by dint of much struggling, the Count succeeded in ridding himself of the leathern extinguisher, and then followed a “love-making” scene between the artful and bombastic Frenchman and the simple, credulous school-girl, that may easily, and, for the matter of that, must be imagined.
The Frenchman of course flattered the poor girl, who, too ready to think well of herself, like the best of us, and wanting the worldly skill to detect his motive for the adulation, drank in at her burning and tingling ears every word of his honied phrases, till, liking the words, she grew gradually to like the wretch that uttered them; and it was not long before she got to think the Count de Sanschemise one of the most polite and amiable gentlemen she had ever met with. Once or twice the Frenchman, pretending to be struck with the exquisite beauty of her hand, seized it, and was about to press it in feigned admiration to his lips, when a sense of the impropriety of her conduct burst upon the girl, and she indignantly snatched it from him; but the expert trickster soon knew how to heal the wound he had inflicted, and in a few minutes, by some dexterous mode of pleasing—by some infallible appeal to her self-love—had made himself appear to her the same charming, agreeable man as ever. Thus matters progressed, until, at the expiration of the half-hour that was to constitute the term of Miss Wewitz’s absence, the weak-minded and warm-hearted school-girl had told him, the Frenchman, in approved maiden language, that she certainly must confess she liked him a little bit; but it was impossible for her to say she loved him, when she had only known him for so short a time. She shouldn’t wonder but he only wanted to make a silly of her, after all; and then to go and tell all the other gentlemen up stairs what a simpleton she was, and how she had believed all the many fine things and the soft nonsense he had been whispering in her ear—though, for the matter of that, she had not paid the least attention to a single word he had said—it had all gone in at one ear and out at the other, she could tell him; for she knew well enough what a pack of deceitful things the French gentlemen were,—they were all general lovers; and she dare say that he’d go and repeat the very same things—silly things—that he’d been telling her, to the first poor girl he met after leaving.
Of course, M. le Comte de Sanschemise threw his eyes up to the ceiling, and gazed steadfastly at the pink, pickled-looking Cupid that was painted in the centre of it, and supposed to be supporting, while in the act of flying, the heavy ormolu lamp that dangled from his hand; then he whispered, in subdued recitative, an impassioned French “roman,” commencing,—
“Vous le savez! je vous adore!”
all the while gesticulating in the most theatrical manner: now he extended his arms out, and leaned far forward towards her; now he suddenly threw back the lapel of his surtout, and tapped quickly and repeatedly the left side of his embroidered waistcoat; then, as the sentiment of the “chanson” grew more desperate, he clasped his forehead with his two hands, and rolled himself backwards and forwards, exclaiming,—
“Un seul mot pour me satisfaire!
Dites le moi (ange du ciel), je vous en pr-r-r-ie! dites le moi!”
after which he tore his wig for a few minutes, and then dropped, exhausted, into the nearest chair. Unfortunately, however, for the pathos of the Count, the nearest chair happened to be a “devotional,” and the seat being lower, and the back less substantial than those of the ordinary style, and the Frenchman, being unprepared for the extra distance that he had to descend, fell with such force on the cushion, that the back gave way with a crash, while M. le Comte himself was thrown with his head backwards, and his legs up in the air, with such violence, that the buttons of his braces and straps were heard to burst with a loud explosion.