use?"

"I slept on a sofa in his library."

She gave me a look which was as much as to say, "My poor boy, how very
unpractical you are!"

"Go on doing nothing," she said; "that's the best you can do. If my
father didn't think he was expected he would beat a retreat at once."

At this instant, M. Charnot came back to us, having seen his two trunks
and a hatbox placed on top of the omnibus of the Hotel de France.

"That is where you have found rooms for us?"

"Yes, sir."

"It is now twelve minutes past nine; tell Monsieur Mouillard that we
shall call upon him at ten o'clock precisely."

I went a few steps with them, and saw them into the omnibus, which was
whirled off at a fast trot by its two steeds.

When I had lost them from my sight I cast a look around me, and noticed
three people standing in line beneath the awning, and gazing upon me with
interest. I recognized Monsieur, Madame, and Mademoiselle Lorinet. They
were all smiling with the same look of contemptuous mockery. I bowed. The
man alone returned my salute, raising his hat. By some strange freak of
fate, Berthe was again wearing a blue dress.

I went back in the direction of the Rue du Four, happy, though at my
wits' end, forming projects that were mutually destructive; now
expatiating in the seventh heaven, now loading myself with the most
appalling curses. I slipped along the streets, concealed beneath my
umbrella, for the rain was falling; a great storm-cloud had burst over
Bourges, and I blessed the rain which gave me a chance to hide my face.

From the banks of the Voizelle to the old quarter around the cathedral is
a rather long walk. When I turned from the Rue Moyenne, the Boulevard des
Italiens of Bourges, into the Rue du Four, a blazing sun was drying the
rain on the roofs, and the cuckoo clock at M. Festuquet's--a neighbor of
my uncle--was striking the hour of meeting.

I had not been three minutes at the garden door, a key to which had been
given me by Madeleine, when M. Charnot appeared with Jeanne on his arm.

"To think that I've forgotten my overshoes, which I never fail to take
with me to the country!"

"The country, father?" said Jeanne, "why, Bourges is a city!--"

"To be sure--to be sure," answered M. Charnot, who feared he had hurt my
feelings.

He put on his spectacles and began to study the old houses around him.

"Yes, a city; really quite a city."

I do not remember what commonplace I stammered.

Little did I care f