Léon tried to explain his predicament, but he received nothing but threats of arrest by way of answer.
“If I come down to you!” cried the Commissary.
“Ay,” said Léon, “do!”
“I will not!” cried the Commissary.
“You dare not!” answered Léon.
At that the Commissary closed his window.
“All is over,” said the singer. “The serenade was perhaps ill-judged. These boors have no sense of humour.”
“Let us get away from here,” said Elvira, with a shiver. “All these people looking—it is so rude and so brutal.” And then giving way once more to passion—“Brutes!” she cried aloud to the candle-lit spectators—“brutes! brutes! brutes!”
“Sauve qui peut,” said Léon. “You have done it now!”
And taking the guitar in one hand and the case in the other, he led the way with something too precipitate to be merely called precipitation from the scene of this absurd adventure.