“Gerville will come into this house, I am perfectly sure. Somebody must have told him that I am here. Be obliging enough to take my place for a moment, and give me yours in this room; I will leave my door open, he will see that I am alone, and his suspicions will vanish.”
“But why don’t you lock yourself in with your inamorata? he won’t break down your door.”
“He is quite capable of it! or else he would wait for me on the boulevard; and if I should go out with Agathe, you can judge for yourself what a scandalous scene there would be. Furthermore, we live in the same house, you know; and if he has discovered anything, how shall I ever dare to go home? He’s just the man to lie in wait for me on the stairs at night.”
“Then why in the devil did you meddle with his mistress?”
“What can you expect? a moment of folly. It was that morning I waited with her on our landing that it took me.”
“Ah, yes! the morning you both played the spy on me.”
“Oh! great God! he has come in!” cried Raymond, who had glanced out on the boulevard; “save me, my friend—in pity’s name! Go—I’ll join you later.”
Giving me no time to reply, Raymond jammed my hat over my ears, dragged and pushed me out of my private room, and locked himself in. I made no resistance, and without any idea as yet as to what I proposed to do for my neighbor, whose most distinctive quality courage certainly was not, I entered the room where Agathe was. She uttered a cry of surprise when she saw me.
“Mon Dieu! it’s Eugène! Is it you? is it really you?”
“Why, to be sure it’s I, sacrificing myself to save poor Raymond, who’s in such a fright that it will make him ill.”