“Once more, monsieur, remember that you are not the lord of the manor, that you should be received with a salvo of musketry!”
“That makes no difference, madame; a servant always has the right to discharge his gun when his masters come home.”
“If all servants did that every time that their masters came home there would be an incessant fusillade everywhere.”
At last the carriage drew up in front of a pretty stoop. The maid alighted; Chamoureau, who was in a hurry to inspect his property, attempted to do the same and dropped on the ground all the boxes and packages that he had on his knees.
Thereupon Thélénie made a great outcry and applied some far from complimentary epithets to her husband. To escape that deluge of abuse, the new proprietor darted up the steps, through the vestibule, up a flight of stairs, and disappeared.
Thélénie bade the maid pick up the boxes, which contained elaborately trimmed bonnets and caps—hence her wrath against her husband. They were all taken up to the apartment which madame had chosen for her own.
Mademoiselle Mélie went into ecstasies over the elegance and convenient arrangement of the rooms, and the beauty of the view, while she dressed her mistress, who began operations by changing her costume; then the maid went to her own room.
Thélénie, alone in a dainty boudoir adjoining her bedroom, opened a window from which several of the houses in the village were visible, and glanced at them a moment, saying to herself:
“I shall soon know where Edmond lives, and those women whom he goes to see. Why should I not find out now?—Mélie!”
The maid answered the call at once.