“Certainly; my dressing-room opens on the street. Now you know, of course, that Poupart has put the stranger into one of the rooms exactly opposite to mine—”
“One room, mamma!” interrupted Ernestine. “The count occupies three rooms! The little groom, dressed all in black, is in the first. They have made a salon of the next, and the Unknown sleeps in the third.”
“Then he has half the rooms in the inn,” remarked Mademoiselle Herbelot.
“Well, young ladies, and what has that to do with his person?” said Madame Mollot, sharply, not pleased at the interruption. “I am talking of the man himself—”
“Don’t interrupt the orator,” put in Vinet.
“As I was stooping—”
“Seated?” asked Antonin.
“Madame was of course as she naturally would be,—making her toilet and looking at the Mulet,” said Vinet.
In the provinces such jokes are prized, for people have so long said everything to each other that they have recourse at last to the sort of nonsense our fathers indulged in before the introduction of English hypocrisy,—one of those products against which custom-houses are powerless.
“Don’t interrupt the orator,” repeated Cecile Beauvisage to Vinet, with whom she exchanged a smile.