"Not at all! she made the best of it, like a brave heart. She said to herself: 'There's a young buck who isn't such an ass as I thought.'—And I am sure that I have gained greatly in her esteem; that pleases me."
"I can see nothing in all this to interfere with our going now to call for the young ladies and taking them to the Opéra ball, as we agreed."
"Ah! you can't, eh? Well, when I went out for a stroll before dinner, I thought I would find out if the catastrophe had had any results, and I walked as far as Rue de Saintonge, where our turtle-doves had their perch. I asked the concierge: 'Is Mademoiselle Henriette in?'—Thereupon that counterfeit Swiss looked at me with rather a bantering expression, and replied:
"'No, monsieur, those young women have gone away.'
"'Will they return soon?'
"'Return! oh! I fancy they won't return here; they carried off their belongings very cunningly in little bundles, and then they skipped. The landlord came and made a row with me about it, and said that I didn't ought to let anything go out of the house. But what can you expect? the women nowadays wear skirts puffed out like balloons, so, you see, those girls could have stuffed their whole wardrobe underneath. Ah! those skirts are very deceitful; they'll be the cause of many poufs.'[C]
"'But,' I said to the man, 'what is the landlord afraid of? Those young women had some very nice furniture, and I don't suppose they put their mattresses and their wardrobes with glass doors under their skirts, did they? And this isn't a furnished lodging-house; they had their own furniture, didn't they?'
"'That is to say, they had their own furniture to pay for; the upholsterer wanted to carry it away this morning; but not much—the landlord must be paid first and they owed him for three quarters. For all that, it's mighty unpleasant; it always ends in a row! When the upholsterer found that he couldn't carry away his furniture, he was crazy. "You ought not to have let those women go!" he said; "I'd have had them put in prison." And so on and so forth. Have I any right to keep tenants from going out, I'd like to know?'
"'No, certainly you haven't any such right; a concierge's authority doesn't go so far as that; perhaps it may come, though, I shouldn't be surprised! They do some pretty rough things already, but they haven't got to the point of imprisoning tenants.'
"'Never mind; when we let rooms to two girls together again, it will be hotter than it is now!'