You'll end by making him get angry. He's
paid to attend on us, and not to be laughed at by us."

Then, M. Saval noticed that each guest had brought his own provisions.
One held a bottle of wine, and the other a pie. This one had a loaf
of bread, and one a ham.

The tall, fair young fellow placed in his hands an enormous sausage,
and gave orders:

"I say! Go and settle up the sideboard in the corner over there. You
are to put the bottles at the left and the provisions at the right."

Saval, getting quite distracted, exclaimed: "But messieurs, I am a
notary!"

There was a moment's silence, and then a wild outburst of laughter.
One suspicious gentleman asked:

"How are you here?"

He explained, telling about his project of going to the Opera, his
departure from Vernon, his arrival in Paris, and the way in which he
had spent the evening.

They sat around him to listen to him; they greeted him with words of
applause, and called him Scheherazade.

Romantin did not come back. Other guests arrived. M. Saval was
presented to them so that he might begin his story over again. He
declined; they forced him to relate it. They fixed him on one of the
three chairs between two women who kept constantly filling his glass.
He drank; he laughed; he talked; he sang, too. He tried to waltz with
his chair, and fell on the ground.

From that moment, he forgot everything. It seemed to him, however,
that they undressed him, put him to bed, and that his stomach got
sick.

When he awoke, it was broad daylight, and he lay stretched with his
feet against a cupboard, in a strange bed.

An old woman with a broom in her hand was glaring angrily at him. At
last, she said:

"Clear out, you blackguard! Clear out! What right has anyone to get
drunk like this?"

He sat up in the bed, feeling very ill at ease. He asked:

"Where am I?"

"Where are you, you dirty scamp? You are drunk. Take your rotten
carcass out of here as quick as you can,--and lose no time about it!"

He wanted to get up. He found that he was naked in the bed. His
clothes had disappeared. He blurted out:

"Madame, I--"

Then he remembered.... What was he to do? He asked:

"Did Monsieur Romantin come back?"

The door-keeper shouted:

"Will you take your dirty carcass out of this so that he at any rate
may not catch you here?"

M. Saval said, in a state of confusion:

"I haven't got my clothes; they have been taken away from me."

He had to wait, to explain