“Nonsense, you have been sitting in the square
for this last half hour.”
“You were watching me?”
“I was looking at you.”
“But I am sadly in a hurry.”
“I am sure you are not. Confess
that you are in no particular hurry.”
Madame Haggan began to laugh, and said: “Well,
... no ... not ... very....”
A cab passed close to them, and the little Baron called
out: “Cabman!” and the vehicle stopped,
and opening the door, he said: “Get in,
Madame.”
“But, Baron! no, it is impossible to-day; I
really cannot.”
“Madame, you are acting very imprudently; get
in! people are beginning to look at us, and you will
collect a crowd; they will think I am trying to carry
you off, and we shall both be arrested; please get
in!”
She got in, frightened and bewildered, and he sat
down by her side, saying to the cabman: “Rue
de Provence.”
But suddenly she exclaimed: “Good heavens!
I have forgotten a very important telegram; please
drive to the nearest telegraph office first of all.”
The cab stopped a little farther on, in the Rue de
Chateaudun, and she said to the Baron: “Would
you kindly get me a fifty centimes telegraph form?
I promised my husband to invite Martelet to dinner
to-morrow, and had quite forgotten it.”
When the Baron returned and gave her the blue telegraph
form, she wrote in pencil:
“My Dear Friend:
I am not at all well. I am suffering terribly
from
neuralgia, which keeps
me in bed. Impossible to go out. Come and
dine to-morrow night,
so that I may obtain my pardon.
“JEANNE.”
She wetted the gum, fastened it carefully, and addressed
it to: “Viscount de Martelet, 240 Rue Miromesnil,”
and then, giving it back to the Baron, she said:
“Now, will you be kind enough to throw this into
the telegram box.”
“Come! Come!” Pierre Dufaille said,
shrugging his shoulders. “What are you
talking about, when you say that there are no more
adventures? Say that there are no more adventurous
men, and you will be right! Yes, nobody ventures
to trust to chance, in these days, for as soon as there
is any slight mystery, or a spice of danger, they draw
back. If, however, a man is willing to go into
them blindly, and to run the risk of anything that
may happen, he can still meet with adventures, and
even I, who never look for them, met with one in my
life, and a very startling one; let me tell you.
“I was staying in Florence, and was living very
quietly, and all I indulged in, in the way of adventures,
was to listen occasionally to the immoral proposals
with which every stranger is beset at night on the
Piazzo de la Signoria, by some worthy Pandarus
or other, with a head like that of a venerable priest.
These excellent fellows generally introduce you to
their families, where debauchery is carried on in a
very simple, and almost patriarchal fashion, and where
one does not run the slightest risk.
