h
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-glass material I have
sometimes seen in exhibitions of industrial products.' So I fetched my
opera-glass 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 mass, 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. Nobody ever takes to a wig before that time of life. After a
time, when his toilet wa