The “Black Head” presented not a single chink of light upon the street, and the carriage gate was closed.
“This is unprecedented,” observed Léon. “An inn closed by five minutes after eleven! And there were several commercial travellers in the café up to a late hour. Elvira, my heart misgives me. Let us ring the bell.”
The bell had a potent note; and being swung under the arch it filled the house from top to bottom with surly, clanging reverberations. The sound accentuated the conventual appearance of the building; a wintry sentiment, a thought of prayer and mortification, took hold upon Elvira’s mind; and, as for Léon, he seemed to be reading the stage directions for a lugubrious fifth act.
“This is your fault,” said Elvira: “this is what comes of fancying things!”
Again Léon pulled the bell-rope; again the solemn tocsin awoke the echoes of the inn; and ere they had died away, a light glimmered in the carriage entrance, and a powerful voice was heard upraised and tremulous with wrath.
“What’s all this?” cried the tragic host through the spars of the gate. “Hard upon twelve, and you come clamouring like Prussians at the door of a respectable hotel? Oh!” he cried, “I know you now! Common singers! People in trouble with the police! And you present yourselves at midnight like lords and ladies? Be off with you!”
“You will permit me to remind you,” replied Léon, in thrilling tones, “that I am a guest in your house, that I am properly inscribed, and that I have deposited baggage to the value of four hundred francs.”
“You cannot get in at this hour,” returned the man. “This is no thieves’ tavern, for mohocks and night rakes and organ-grinders.”
“Brute!” cried Elvira, for the organ-grinders touched her home.
“Then I demand my baggage,” said Léon, with unabated dignity.