At that moment the concierge joined the party. As he approached the gate opening into the fields, he saw the face which had frightened the ladies. Thereupon he made a very pronounced grimace, and muttered:
“Still here! so that infernal man won’t go away, it seems!”
The stranger looked up at the concierge, and the ladies read in the glance that he cast at the peasant an expression of wrath and contempt. Then, after examining for a moment the other persons in the garden, he drew back his head from the bars and disappeared.
“I would like right well to know who that man is,” said Adeline, looking at her husband.
“Faith! I augur no good for him,” said Madame Germeuil, who breathed more freely since the face had withdrawn from the gate.
“That man looked as if he had evil intentions, did he not, Edouard?”
“Oh! my dear mamma, I don’t go as far as you do! If we had seen the whole man, perhaps his face would have seemed less strange than it did above those old boards.”
“My husband is right, mamma; I think that the way in which we look at things depends upon the situation in which they strike our eyes at first. A man clothed in rags often arouses our suspicions; if he should appear before us well-dressed, we should have no feeling of dread at his aspect. Darkness, silence, moonlight, and the shadows thrown upon objects, all these conditions change our way of seeing things and make our imagination work very rapidly.”
“You may say whatever you please, my dear girl, but that face was not the face of a man looking into a garden from mere curiosity.”
“That may be, but I should have liked to see this stranger’s figure.”