to ask him whence he
came. However, as there might possibly be persons still unconvinced, he
repeated this same jest, for his own satisfaction, three nights running;
so that by the morning of the fourth day nobody had any doubts left.

As generally happens in such cases, M. d'Urban did not know a word of
what was going on until the moment when his friends warned him that he
was the talk of the town. Then he forbade his wife to see her lover
again. The prohibition produced the usual results: on the morrow, as,
soon as M. d'Urban had gone out, the marquise sent for the chevalier to
inform him of the catastrophe in which they were both involved; but she
found him far better prepared than herself for such blows, and he tried
to prove to her, by reproaches for her imprudent conduct, that all this
was her fault; so that at last the poor woman, convinced that it was she
who had brought these woes upon them, burst into tears. Meanwhile, M.
d'Urban, who, being jealous for the first time, was the more seriously
so, having learned that the chevalier was with his wife, shut the doors,
and posted himself in the ante-chamber with his servants, in order to
seize him as he came out. But the chevalier, who had ceased to trouble
himself about Madame d'Urban's tears, heard all the preparations, and,
suspecting some ambush, opened the window, and, although it was one
o'clock in the afternoon and the place was full of people, jumped out of
the window into the street, and did not hurt himself at all, though the
height was twenty feet, but walked quietly home at a moderate pace.

The same evening, the chevalier, intending to relate his new adventure in
all its details, invited some of his friends to sup with him at the
pastrycook Lecoq's. This man, who was a brother of the famous Lecoq of
the rue Montorgueil, was the cleverest eating-house-keeper in Avignon;
his own unusual corpulence commended his cookery, and, when he stood at
the door, constituted an advertisement for his restaurant. The good man,
knowing with what delicate appetites he had to deal, did his very best
that evening, and that nothing might be wanting, waited upon his guests
himself. They spent the night drinking, and towards morning the
chevalier and his companions, being then drunk, espied their host
standing respectfully at the door, his face wreathed in smiles. The
chevalier called him nearer, poured him out a glass of wine and made him
drink with them; then, as t