“Go, go,” said he, “I am busy; I am measuring butter.”
“Heathen Jew!” thought Léon. “Permit me, sir,” he resumed, aloud. “I have gone six times already—“
“Put up your bills if you choose,” interrupted the Commissary. “In an hour or so I will examine your papers at the office. But now go; I am busy.”
“Measuring butter!” thought Berthelini. “O France, and it is for this that we made ’93!”
The preparations were soon made; the bills posted, programmes laid on the dinner-table of every hotel in the town, and a stage erected at one end of the Café of the Triumphs of the Plough; but when Léon returned to the office, the Commissary was once more abroad.
“He is like Madame Benoîton,” thought Léon: “Fichu Commissaire!”
And just then he met the man face to face.
“Here, sir,” said he, “are my papers. Will you be pleased to verify?”
But the Commissary was now intent upon dinner.