“You pester me——”
“Hildegarde, I shall be compelled to resort to severe means. Why, you certainly are glued to your chair; this isn’t natural, I suspect some trick. Ah! I see! I’ll bet that the bottle isn’t in the cupboard.”
And Baudoin rose to go to the cupboard, but as his wife was sitting in front of it and did not move, he pushed her roughly aside, whereupon she reeled, and almost instantly uttered a cry of distress so heartrending that her husband feared that he had hurt her. But it was not Hildegarde who was hurt, it was the bottle under her skirts, which she had involuntarily upset, and which had broken, overflowing the lodge with all the liquor which it contained.
“I say! what’s all this?” cried Baudoin, when he found a stream flowing between his feet; but soon the odor which spread through the room left him in no doubt as to the identity of the liquid.
“It is brandy; she had the bottle under her skirt; what a vile trick!”
“Yes, and you made me break it! that’s the worst of it, you brute! Such splendid brandy!”
“Hildegarde, you persist in your debauchery; I am going to give you a taste of the broomstick.”
“Touch me if you dare! I’ll call the watch! I’ll make a disturbance in the house!”
Meanwhile Baudoin, who was in the habit of keeping his promises, had gone to fetch the broomstick. At that moment, the bell at the street door rang, and this time the woman made haste to open, hoping that it was somebody who would protect her.
It was Georget, the young messenger of the flower market, who entered the house, and in another instant the porter’s lodge, just as Baudoin raised his broomstick over the head of his wife, who ran behind the young man, crying: