“Young ladies, young ladies, I really cannot remain, as you insist, to supper. I do not even know the name of the host on this occasion. I am quite unused to these orgies. I am out here this evening with my servant merely for the purpose of completing a business transaction.”
A chorus of “Ohs!” and “Ahs!” saluted this speech, and Mademoiselle Aglaia, Papa Bouchard’s chief tormentor, asked, solemnly:
“Is your business engagement with a lady or a gentleman?”
And when Papa Bouchard, in the innocence of his soul, replied, “It is with a lady,” each one of the Pouters, as the young ladies of the Pigeon House were called, pretended to fall over in a dead faint.
Papa Bouchard, much alarmed, ran from one to the other, trying to revive them; but while he was rubbing the brow and slapping the hands of each in turn, Louise suddenly came to life, and running and locking the door, put the key into her pocket, so that Papa Bouchard had no means of escape except out of the third-story window or up the chimney.
And at that moment his eye fell on Léontine.
Pity Papa Bouchard! He really had no intention of attending so gay a party. He had spent the whole evening anxiously watching for Madame Vernet. She had not arrived, or at least had not seen fit to reveal herself, and while he was hovering about the entrance to the terrace garden looking for her, these three merry girls had come along, had swooped down on him without the least warning, and had carried him off bodily to de Meneval’s supper. Papa Bouchard had not the slightest idea of where he was when he was plumped down in Captain de Meneval’s room. But one look around him—the sight of Léontine—revealed his whole dreadful predicament to him. It was too much for poor Papa Bouchard!
His persecutors having permitted him to sit on a chair, he endeavored to recover himself, and fanning with his handkerchief in great agitation, he debated with himself what to do. Léontine, meanwhile, was laughing at him without a sign of recognition.
Papa Bouchard, presently finding his voice, said sternly to Léontine: