“Monsieur le comte,” said Pierrotin, visibly troubled, “I am afraid you will be uncomfortable.”
“Why didn’t you keep better count of us?” said Mistigris. “‘Short counts make good ends.’”
“Mistigris, behave yourself,” said his master.
Monsieur de Serizy was evidently taken by all the persons in the coach for a bourgeois of the name of Lecomte.
“Don’t disturb any one,” he said to Pierrotin. “I will sit with you in front.”
“Come, Mistigris,” said the master to his rapin, “remember the respect you owe to age; you don’t know how shockingly old you may be yourself some day. ‘Travel deforms youth.’ Give your place to monsieur.”
Mistigris opened the leathern curtain and jumped out with the agility of a frog leaping into the water.
“You mustn’t be a rabbit, august old man,” he said to the count.
“Mistigris, ‘ars est celare bonum,’” said his master.
“I thank you very much, monsieur,” said the count to Mistigris’s master, next to whom he now sat.