“No, I love Aurelie too well; I won’t give her any reason to complain of me.”
“Ah! my dear fellow, what a future you are preparing for yourself!” cried Maxime.
“It is eleven o’clock; she must have returned from the Ambigu,” said Rochefide, leaving the club.
And he called out his coachman to drive at top speed to the rue de la Bruyere.
Madame Schontz had given precise directions; monsieur could enter as master with the fullest understanding of madame; but, warned by the noise of monsieur’s arrival, madame had so arranged that the sound of her dressing-door closing as women’s doors do close when they are surprised, was to reach monsieur’s ears. Then, at a corner of the piano, Fabien’s hat, forgotten intentionally, was removed very awkwardly by a maid the moment after monsieur had entered the room.
“Did you go to the Ambigu, my little girl?”
“No, I changed my mind, and stayed at home to play music.”
“Who came to see you?” asked the marquis, good-humoredly, seeing the hat carried off by the maid.
“No one.”
At that audacious falsehood Arthur bowed his head; he passed beneath the Caudine forks of submission. A real love descends at times to these sublime meannesses. Arthur behaved with Madame Schontz as Sabine with Calyste, and Calyste with Beatrix.