“Do you know, my wife wanted me to melt down my statue to make into a bell for our church? Because she would have been the donor. A masterpiece of Myron’s, my dear sir!”
“Masterpiece! Masterpiece! A pretty masterpiece she’s made, breaking a man’s leg!”
“Look here, wife,” said M. de Peyrehorade, in a firm tone, stretching out to her his right leg in a stocking of clouded silk, “if my Venus had broken that leg for me, I should not have regretted it.”
“Gracious! Peyrehorade, how can you say that? Fortunately the man’s getting better. But still I can’t bring myself to look at a statue which causes misfortunes like that. Poor Jean Coll!”
“Wounded by Venus, sir,” said M. de Peyrehorade with a great laugh, “wounded by Venus, the rascal complains:
‛Veneris nec præmia nôris.’
Who hasn’t been wounded by Venus?”
M. Alphonse, who understood French better than Latin, winked an eye with a knowing air, and looked at me, as much as to ask, “D’ye understand, Mr. Parisian?”
The supper came to an end. For the last hour I had eaten nothing. I was tired, and I could not manage to hide the frequent yawns which escaped me. Madame de Peyrehorade was the first to notice them, and remarked that it was time to go to bed. Thereupon began fresh apologies for the poor couch I was about to find. I should not be so comfortable as in Paris. Things are so uncomfortable in the provinces. I must excuse Roussillon people. It was in vain that I protested that after a journey in the mountains a truss of straw would be a delicious couch for me; they persisted in entreating me to pardon poor country folk, if they did not treat me so well as they could have desired. At last I went upstairs to the room which was meant for me, accompanied by M. de Peyrehorade. The stair, the upper steps of which were of wood, led to the middle of a corridor, on which several rooms opened.
“To the right,” said my host, “are the apartments which I intend for the future Madame Alphonse. Your room is at the end of the opposite corridor. You quite understand,” he added with an air which was meant to be sly, “you quite understand that newly married folk must be isolated. You are at one end of the house, they at the other.” We entered a well furnished room, where the first object on which I set eyes was a bed seven feet long, six wide, and so high that one required a stool to hoist oneself into it. My host, having shown me where the bell was, and having satisfied himself that the sugar-bowl was filled and the eau-de-Cologne bottles duly set on the dressing-table, after having asked me several times if I had everything I wanted, wished me good-night and left me to myself.