"Sapristi! and I have to go to Freluchon's to change my clothes! However, there are plenty of cabs, luckily. Is there anything for me to pay, waiter?"
"No, monsieur, it's all paid."
"Good!—To think that I haven't an overcoat to hide this costume! Freluchon is to blame for that; 'you won't be cold,' he said.—It isn't the cold I'm afraid of, but the street urchins.—Call a cab, waiter; have it come as near the door as possible."
"Bless me! monsieur, they ain't allowed to come on the sidewalk."
"Well, then, right in front of the door."
Chamoureau covered himself with his cloak as well as he could; he pulled his cap over his eyes, drew his chin inside his ruff, pulled up his boot-tops, and when the waiter announced that the cab was waiting below, rushed down the stairway and across the sidewalk so recklessly that he nearly overturned a woman carrying a tray of bread.
The woman shouted after Chamoureau, who had knocked off three loaves, calling him: "Beast, brute, dirty scum!" But he let her shout, for he was already out of sight inside the cab; he gave Freluchon's address and the cab drove away followed by the hoots of the urchins who had gathered to see a masker, and by the shrieks of the woman with the tray on her head, who was obliged to pick up her loaves.
They soon reached the house on Rue Saint-Georges in which Freluchon lived. Chamoureau leaped out of his cab under the porte cochère, and hastily paid the cabman and dismissed him; because, in his everyday clothes, he could easily walk home.
That transaction completed, the widower said to the concierge:
"I am going up to Freluchon's room."