Mr. Greyne pushed away the sunlit buttered toast, and got up.
“Monsieur is superb. Never have I seen a traveller like monsieur!” Napoleon’s voice was almost reverent. He hastened out, followed slowly by Mr. Greyne.
“A carriage for monsieur! Monsieur desires to go to the Rue du Petit Nègre!”
The staff of the hotel gathered about the door as if to speed a royal personage, and Mr. Greyne noticed that their faces too were touched with an almost startled reverence. He stepped into the carriage, signed feebly, but with determination, to the Arab coachman, and was driven away, followed by a parting “Oh, là là!” from the chasseur, uttered in a voice that sounded shrill with sheer amazement.
Through winding, crowded streets he went, by bazaars and Moorish bath-houses, mosques and Catholic churches, barracks and cafés, till at length the carriage turned into an alley that crept up a steep hill. It moved on a little way, and then stopped.
“Monsieur must descend here,” said the coachman. “Mount the steps, go to the right and then to the left. Near the summit of the hill he will find the Rue du Petit Nègre. Shall I wait for monsieur?”
“Yes.”
The coachman began to make a cigarette, while Mr. Greyne set forth to follow his directions, and, at length, stood before an arch, which opened into a courtyard adorned with orange-trees in tubs, and paved with blue and white tiles. Around this courtyard was a three-storey house with a flat roof, and from a bureau near a little fountain a stout Frenchwoman called to demand his business. He asked for Mademoiselle Verbena, and was at once shown into a saloon lined with chairs covered with yellow rep, and begged to take a seat. In two minutes Mademoiselle Verbena appeared, drying her eyes with a tiny pocket-handkerchief, and forcing a little pathetic smile of welcome. Mr. Greyne clasped her hand in silence. She sat down in a rep chair at his right, and they looked at each other.
“Mais, mon Dieu! How monsieur is changed!” cried the Levantine. “If madame could see him! What has happened to monsieur?”
“Miss Verbena,” replied Mr. Greyne, “I have seen the Ouled on the heights.”