“ ‘But what, my dear, has all this to do with the questions I asked you? Look here, Ninette; I believe it’s you that’s gone mad, rose in love—sacre!—I wish I could catch you and your Shake-the-spear loving once. I’d fix him and you too, my lady, that I would! I’d fix his flint so that he wouldn’t shake any more spears around my garden, that I would! Will you have done with all your rigmarole, and tell what you know?’
“ ‘Certainly. The gentleman’s sweetheart, who came with him to-day, and who went with me into my private room to arrange her hair and adjust her petticoats, was as fine and pretty a young blonde of eighteen years as ever sat a man’s heart beating triple bobmajors against his ribs. Such ankles, such feet, such a bloom upon her cheeks and lips!—ah! and such a tournure! such hips, such embonpoint! Sacristie! it’s lucky I was not a man when I fixed her crinoline, or, ma foi! I should have gone mad and run off with her, leaving monsieur to mourn his loss, while I revelled in the essence of love with his fiancée. Besides that’——
“ ‘Stop, stop, Ninette—for God’s sake stop! I have lost a bottle of Jean Lafitte, forty odd years old, and lost my brains besides!’
“Here the whole five of us collected in a group, and an explanation followed which instantly banished all mirth from Pierre, and all poetry from la Jardinière.
“Declining all thoughts of the wager and the wine, I left the party in a maze of stupor, and sped as hastily as I could to the Guinguette, or Tea-Garden, where, it will be remembered, Ravalette and myself had entered to converse with the proprietor regarding his novel and costly experiment in the way of feasting poor people a la les richeuse.
“Entering this place, I put the same question to the proprietor that I had to the gardener and the man of Michel le Compte; but instead of surprise at his answer, I was absolutely dumb-founded, for the man insisted that I entered the shop quite alone, but that I had conversed with him in two separate and perfectly distinct voices, au ventriloque—which he had regarded as very singular, but concluded that I was a student of ventriloquism, and took every opportunity to test my proficiency, and had now come back to ascertain what success attended the experiment.
“I was too much horrified to speak; but, simply nodding my adieux, took my departure in a mood much easier to be imagined than described.
“Not yet content, I made inquiries as to whether any one had seen two horsemen of a peculiar description pass through any of the streets of Belleville.
“Nobody had seen any such, or indeed any horsemen whatever. I was thunderstruck.
“ ‘I’ll track them!’ I cried, as a last resource; ‘for the place where we walked, where the horse and groom stood waiting, and where the old man mounted, was a soft, yielding, grassless turf. This will decide whether I have been dealing with the living or the dead, and that too in this broad daylight.’