“What matter if they are so near,” said Leon to himself. “The Englishman will soon be tipsy, and the Hussars will leave before midnight.”
On entering the Blue Chamber his first care was to make sure that the communicating doors were tightly locked, and that they had bolts to them. There were double doors on the Englishman’s side, and the walls were thick. The partition was thinner on the Hussars’ side, but the door had a lock and a bolt. After all, this was a more effectual barrier to curiosity than the blinds of a carriage, and how many people think they are hidden from the world in a hackney carriage!
Assuredly the most opulent imagination could certainly never have pictured a more complete state of happiness than that of these two young lovers, who, after waiting so long, found themselves alone and far away from jealous and prying eyes, preparing to relate their past sufferings at their ease and to taste the delights of a perfect reunion. But the devil always finds out a way to pour his drop of wormwood into the cup of happiness.
Johnson was not the first who wrote—he took it from a Greek writer—that no man could say, “Today I shall be happy.” This truth was recognized at a very remote period by the greatest philosophers, and yet is ignored by a certain number of mortals, and especially by most lovers.
Whilst taking a poorly served dinner in the Blue Chamber from some dishes filched from the Hussars’ and the Chasseurs’ banquet, Leon and his lover were much disturbed by the conversation in which the gentlemen in the neighboring room were engaged. They held forth on abstruse subjects concerning strategy and tactics, which I shall refrain from repeating.
There were a succession of wild stories—nearly all of them broad and accompanied by shrieks of laughter, in which it was often difficult for our lovers not to join. Leon’s friend was no prude; but there are things one prefers not to hear, particularly during a tete-a-tete with the man one loves. The situation became more and more embarrassing, and when they were taking in the officers’ dessert, Leon felt he must go downstairs to beg the host to tell the gentlemen that he had an invalid wife in the room adjoining theirs, and they would deem it a matter of courtesy if a little less noise were made.
The noise was nothing out of the way for a regimental dinner, and the host was taken aback and did not know what to reply. Just when Leon gave his message for the officers, a waiter asked for champagne for the Hussars, and a maidservant for port wine for the Englishman.
“I told him there was none,” she added.
“You are a fool. I have every kind of wine. I will go and find him some. Port is it? Bring me the bottle of ratafia, a bottle of quince and a small decanter of brandy.”
When the host had concocted the port in a trice, he went into the large dining-room to execute Leon’s commission, which at first roused a furious storm.