“Why doesn’t my aunt come, when she knows I am on a gridiron!” exclaimed Giguet, suddenly. “These three hours are like three years!”
His secret had escaped him and he now admitted to his friend that Madame Marion had gone on his behalf to old Grevin with a formal proposal for Cecile’s hand.
The pair had now reached the Brienne road opposite to the Mulet hostelry. While the lawyer looked down the street towards the bridge his aunt would have to cross, the sub-prefect examined the gullies made by the rain in the open square. Arcis is not paved. The plains of Champagne furnish no material fit for building, nor even pebbles large enough for cobble-stone pavements. One or two streets and a few detached places are imperfectly macadamized and that is saying enough to describe their condition after a rain. The sub-prefect gave himself an appearance of occupation by apparently exercising his thoughts on this important object; but he lost not a single expression of suffering on the anxious face of his companion.
At this moment, the stranger was returning from the Chateau de Cinq-Cygne, where he had apparently passed the night. Goulard resolved to clear up, himself, the mystery wrapped about the Unknown, who was physically enveloped in an overcoat of thick cloth called a paletot, then the fashion. A mantle, thrown across his knees for a covering, hid the lower half of his body, while an enormous muffler of red cashmere covered his neck and head to the eyes. His hat, jauntily tipped to one side, was, nevertheless, not ridiculous. Never was a mystery more mysteriously bundled up and swathed.
“Look out!” cried the tiger, who preceded the tilbury on horseback. “Open, papa Poupart, open!” he screamed in his shrill little voice.
The three servants of the inn ran out, and the tilbury drove in without any one being able to see a single feature of the stranger’s face. The sub-prefect followed the tilbury into the courtyard, and went to the door of the inn.
“Madame Poupart,” said Antonin, “will you ask Monsieur—Monsieur—”
“I don’t know his name,” said Gothard’s sister.
“You do wrong! The rules of the police are strict, and Monsieur Groslier doesn’t trifle, like some commissaries of police.”
“Innkeepers are never to blame about election-time,” remarked the little tiger, getting off his horse.