But for Mademoiselle Amanda the couple would undoubtedly have come to blows, and finally Madame Bernard, who did not wish to be thought demented, threw a shawl over her head and ran to the proprietor's house. Bernard had spoken truly; with her own two ears, ornamented with big, gilded hoops, she heard the incredible word. Only, as she was a wise and prudent woman, she demanded "a bit of writing," to put, as she said, "her responsibility under cover."
She, too, returned thunderstruck, and all the evening in the lodge, father, mother, and daughter deliberated.
Should they obey? or should they warn some relative of this mad young man, whose common sense would oppose itself to such insanity?
They decided to obey.
Next morning, Bernard, buttoning himself into his best frock coat, made the rounds of the three-and-twenty lodges to announce his great news.
Ten minutes afterward the house in the Rue de la Victoire was in a state of commotion impossible to describe. People who, for forty years had lived on the same floor, and never honored each other with so much as a tip of the hat, now clustered together and chatted eagerly.
"Do you know, monsieur?"
"It is very extraordinary."
"Simply unheard of!"
"The proprietor's lowered my rent!"