"We talked so much about the stranger yesterday that I dreamed of him all night," said Madame Mollot.

"Ha! ha! do you still dream of unknown heroes, fair lady?" said Vinet.

"You are very impertinent; if I chose I could make you dream of me," she retorted. "So this morning when I rose--"

It may not be useless to say that Madame Mollot was considered a clever woman in Arcis; that is, she expressed herself fluently and abused that advantage. A Parisian, wandering by chance into these regions, like the Unknown, would have thought her excessively garrulous.

"--I was, naturally, making my toilet, and as I looked mechanically about me--"

"Through the window?" asked Antonin.

"Certainly; my dressing-room opens on the street. Now you know, of course, that Poupart has put the stranger into one of the rooms exactly opposite to mine--"

"One room, mamma!" interrupted Ernestine. "The count occupies three rooms! The little groom, dressed all in black, is in the first. They have made a salon of the next, and the Unknown sleeps in the third."

"Then he has half the rooms in the inn," remarked Mademoiselle Herbelot.

"Well, young ladies, and what has that to do with his person?" said Madame Mollot, sharply, not pleased at the interruption. "I am talking of the man himself--"

"Don't interrupt the orator," put in Vinet.

"As I was stooping--"

"Seated?" asked Antonin.

"Madame was of course as she naturally would be,--making her toilet and looking at the Mulet," said Vinet.

In the provinces such jokes are prized, for people have so long said everything to each other that they have recourse at last to the sort of nonsense our fathers indulged in before the introduction of English hypocrisy,--one of those products against which custom-houses are powerless.

"Don't interrupt the orator," repeated Cecile Beauvisage to Vinet, with whom she exchanged a smile.

"My eyes involuntarily fell on the window of the room in which the stranger had slept the night before. I don't know what time he went to bed, although I was awake till past midnight; but I have the misfortune to be married to a man who snores fit to crack the planks and the rafters. If I fall asleep first, oh! I sleep so sound nothing can wake me; but if Mollot drops off first my night is ruined--"

"Don't you ever go off together?" said Achille Pigoult, joining the group. "I see you are talking of sleep."

"Hush, naughty boy!" replied Madame Mollot, graciously.

"Do you know what they mean?" whispered Cecile to Ernestine.

"At any rate, he was not in at one o'clock in the morning," continued Madame Mollot.

"Then he defrauded you!--came home without your knowing it!" said Achille Pigoult. "Ha! that man is sly indeed; he'll put us all in his pouch and sell us in the market-place."

"To whom?" asked Vinet.

"Oh! to a project! to an idea! to a system!" replied the notary, to whom Olivier smiled with a knowing air.

"Imagine my surprise," continued Madame Mollot, "when I saw a stuff, a material, of splendid magnificence, most beautiful! dazzling! I said to myself, 'That must be a dressing-gown of the spun-gla.s.s material I have sometimes seen in exhibitions of industrial products.' So I fetched my opera-gla.s.s to examine it. But, good gracious! what do you think I saw?

Above the dressing-gown, where the head ought to have been, I saw an enormous ma.s.s, something like a knee--I can't tell you how my curiosity was excited."

"I can conceive it," said Antonin.

"No, you can _not_ conceive it," said Madame Mollot; "for this knee--"

"Ah! I understand," cried Olivier Vinet, laughing; "the Unknown was also making his toilet, and you saw his two knees."

"No, no!" cried Madame Mollot; "you are putting incongruities into my mouth. The stranger was standing up; he held a sponge in his hand above an immense basin, and--none of your jokes, Monsieur Olivier!--it wasn't his knee, it was his head! He was washing his bald head; he hasn't a spear of hair upon it."

"Impudent man!" said Antonin. "He certainly can't have come with ideas of marriage in that head. Here we must have hair in order to be married.

That's essential."

"I am therefore right in saying that our Unknown visitor must be fifty years old. n.o.body ever takes to a wig before that time of life. After a time, when his toilet was finished, he opened his window and looked out; and _then_ he wore a splendid head of black hair. He turned his eyegla.s.s full on me,--for by that time, I was in my balcony. Therefore, my dear Cecile, you see for yourself that you can't take that man for the hero of your romance."

"Why not? Men of fifty are not to be despised, if they are counts," said Ernestine.

"Heavens! what has age to do with it?" said Mademoiselle Herbelot.

"Provided one gets a husband," added Vinet, whose cold maliciousness made him feared.

"Yes," replied the old maid, feeling the cut, "I should prefer a man of fifty, indulgent, kind, and considerate, to a young man without a heart, whose wit would bite every one, even his wife."

"This is all very well for conversation," retorted Vinet, "but in order to love the man of fifty and reject the other, it is necessary to have the opportunity to choose."

"Oh!" said Madame Mollot, in order to stop this pa.s.sage at arms between the old maid and Vinet, who always went to far, "when a woman has had experience of life she knows that a husband of fifty or one of twenty-five is absolutely the same thing if she merely respects him. The important things in marriage are the benefits to be derived from it. If Mademoiselle Beauvisage wants to go to Paris and shine there--and in her place I should certainly feel so--she ought not to take a husband in Arcis. If I had the fortune she will have, I should give my hand to a count, to a man who would put me in a high social position, and I shouldn't ask to see the certificate of his birth."

"It would satisfy you to see his toilet," whispered Vinet in her ear.

"But the king makes counts," said Madame Marion, who had now joined the group and was surveying the bevy of young ladies.

"Ah! madame," remarked Vinet, "but some young girls prefer their counts already made."

"Well, Monsieur Antonin," said Cecile, laughing at Vinet's sarcasm.

"Your ten minutes have expired, and you haven't told us whether the Unknown is a count or not."

"I shall keep my promise," replied the sub-prefect, perceiving at that moment the head of his valet in the doorway; and again he left his place beside Cecile.

"You are talking of the stranger," said Madame Marion. "Is anything really known about him?"

"No, madame," replied Achille Pigoult; "but he is, without knowing it, like the clown of a circus, the centre of the eyes of the two thousand inhabitants of this town. I know one thing about him," added the little notary.

"Oh, tell us, Monsieur Achille!" cried Ernestine, eagerly.

"His tiger's name is Paradise!"

"Paradise!" echoed every one included in the little circle.

"Can a man be called Paradise?" asked Madame Herbelot, who had joined her sister-in-law.