“Monsieur le comte particularly told me a colonel, an aide-de-camp of Mina,” insisted the girl.
“I am not a colonel,” replied Georges.
“But isn’t your name Georges?”
“What’s all this?” said the steward, intervening.
“Monsieur, my name is Georges Marest; I am the son of a rich wholesale ironmonger in the rue Saint-Martin; I come on business to Monsieur le Comte de Serizy from Maitre Crottat, a notary, whose second clerk I am.”
“And I,” said the girl, “am telling him that monseigneur said to me: ‘There’ll come a colonel named Czerni-Georges, aide-de-camp to Mina; he’ll come by Pierrotin’s coach; if he asks for me show him into the waiting-room.’”
“Evidently,” said the clerk, “the count is a traveller who came down with us in Pierrotin’s coucou; if it hadn’t been for the politeness of a young man he’d have come as a rabbit.”
“A rabbit! in Pierrotin’s coucou!” exclaimed Moreau and the poultry-girl together.
“I am sure of it, from what this girl is now saying,” said Georges.
“How so?” asked the steward.