"Firemen! firemen!"
"Firemen for the ghost, monsieur?" asked François in surprise.
"The ghost!" cried Robineau, putting his legs back into bed. "What! has anyone seen anything horrible?"
"We’ve seen a light in the North Tower, monsieur!"
"A light! the deuce! Go at once, François, and wake the gentlemen. Wake everybody! I will get up at once."
François went to Alfred’s door and knocked, but no one answered. Soon, however, all the other doors opened except Eudoxie’s. Edouard had drawn on his trousers, and came out to inquire the cause of the uproar. Cornélie, in a dressing jacket, over which she had hastily thrown a large silk shawl, appeared, with a candle in her hand. Monsieur Férulus also arrived, followed by Jeannette, whom no one had seen heretofore, and who had put on over her night-dress an old black waistcoat, which in no wise resembled a dressing jacket; while Monsieur Férulus, in his haste, had put on a housemaid’s cap; but everybody was too much engrossed to notice that. Everybody questioned everybody else.
"It’s the ghost in the tower!" said all the servants, while Mademoiselle Cornélie did not cease to call her sister, saying:
"And Monsieur Alfred, too—why doesn’t he get up?"
Robineau appeared in a pair of drawers in the waistband of which he had thrust a pair of pistols, while he had his gun under his left arm and a razor in his right hand.
At last Eudoxie partly opened her door, saying in a low voice: