“Who is there?”
“It is I! I! I!”
“Who are you?”
“The Commissary Passauf!”
The Commissary Passauf! The very man whose office it had been contemplated to suppress for ten years. What had happened, then? Could the Burgundians have invaded Quiquendone, as they did in the fourteenth century? No event of less importance could have so moved Commissary Passauf, who in no degree yielded the palm to the burgomaster himself for calmness and phlegm.
On a sign from Van Tricasse—for the worthy man could not have articulated a syllable—the bar was pushed back and the door opened.
Commissary Passauf flung himself into the antechamber. One would have thought there was a hurricane.
“What’s the matter, Monsieur the commissary?” asked Lotchè, a brave woman, who did not lose her head under the most trying circumstances.
“What’s the matter!” replied Passauf, whose big round eyes expressed a genuine agitation. “The matter is that I have just come from Doctor Ox’s, who has been holding a reception, and that there—”