“It’s the bouquet, madame, I tell you.—Come, Bertrand; one! two! At the double-quick, isn’t it?”
“I am not willing that you should storm my room, monsieur.—Take away that ladder, Bertrand, I beg you.—You are mad, monsieur! Do you have to storm a fort to catch a wolf?”
“Nobody knows what may happen, madame.”
“I know that you won’t happen to reach my room, monsieur.”
As she said this, Madame Destival closed her window with a bang, and led Madame de la Thomassinière from her room, saying:
“Let’s go down, my dear, let’s go down, I beg you, for they’ll turn everything topsy-turvy with their drilling.”
They went out on the terrace, where Monsieur Destival still held his ladder, which Bertrand tried in vain to take away from him. The business agent was determined to raise it somewhere.
“Mon Dieu! monsieur, if you absolutely must lay siege to something,” said Madame Destival, “let it be a tree in the garden, and not my bedroom.”
Bertrand grasped at this idea, and Athalie suggested to them that they should attack the tree in which Monsieur Monin’s cap had lodged. They went toward the swing and found the ex-druggist there, with his short, fat arms around the tree, trying to climb it, but unable to raise himself more than three inches from the ground.
At sight of the ladder, Monin uttered a cry of delight, and outdid himself in thanks when Monsieur Destival ascended it at the double-quick, having no suspicion that the manœuvre had any other purpose than the recovery of his cap. But alas! Monsieur Destival thought it best to capture the trophy with his bayonet, and the point of his weapon pierced the top, which was of thin straw. Bertrand shouted “Bravo!” Monin made a wry face, the ladies laughed, and Auguste arrived in time to witness the tableau.