"Give this gentleman a room. Your servant," she added, with a bob courtesy.
I never saw Madame Rose again in my life.
*
A woman preceded me up a dark and steep staircase, holding a labelled key in her hand; a Savoyard followed with my little trunk. When we reached the third floor, the chamber-maid opened a room; the Savoyard put the trunk across the arms of a chair.
The chamber-maid asked: "Does monsieur require anything?"
I answered, "No."
My cousin Moreau.
Three whistles sounded; the chamber-maid cried, "Coming!" rushed out, closed the door, and tumbled downstairs with the Savoyard. When I found myself alone in my room, my heart became so strangely full that I was nearly taking the road back to Brittany. All that I had heard tell of Paris returned to my mind; I was embarrassed in a hundred ways. I should have liked to go to bed, and the bed was not made; I was hungry, and did not know how to set about dining. I was afraid of committing a solecism: ought I to call the people of the hotel? Ought I to go downstairs? To whom should I apply? I ventured to put my head out of the window: I saw only a small inner yard, deep as a well, through which people came and went who would never dream of giving a thought to the prisoner on the third floor. I went and sat down beside the dirty recess in which I was to sleep, reduced to examining the figures on the paper with which its walls were hung. A distant sound of voices reached my ears, increased, drew nigh; my door opened: in came my brother and one of my cousins, the son of a sister of my mother's who had made none too good a marriage. Madame Rose had after all taken pity on the numskull, and had sent word to my brother, whose address she learnt at Rennes, that I had arrived in Paris. My brother clasped me in his arms. My Cousin Moreau was a big fat man, daubed all over with snuff, who ate like an ogre, talked a great deal, was always trotting about, puffing, choking, with his mouth half open, his tongue half out, who knew everybody, and was equally at home in gaming-houses, antechambers, and drawing-rooms.
"Come, chevalier," he cried, "so here you are in Paris; I am going to take you to Madame de Chastenay's!"
Who was this woman whose name I heard uttered for the first time? This proposal set me against my Cousin Moreau.