Part 43 (2/2)

The devil must really have been in me to make me take the trouble to have my hair so prettily frizzled.

I was just about to dash hastily up the staircase of Bessy's dwelling, when whom should I run into but Toni Sagi. It only needed that. He came from the same town as I did, was a common friend of all my friends, and was about as reticent of news as a town-crier.

”Your servant, friend! Why, you're quite a stranger. I've just come from Bessy. The young lady is in a very bad humour. She as good as pitched me out of doors. She must be expecting some one. Perhaps you are the very man, eh?”

It was all up with me now! To-morrow every newspaper in the town will report my visit here. For ”quod licet _bovi_, non licet _Jovi_.”

If I were to turn back now, it would only make matters worse.

I hastened up the steps. Bessy lived on the third floor.... To get to her rooms I had to follow the open corridor which led down to the courtyard. I pa.s.sed on my way the lodgings of a milliner, a female p.a.w.nbroker, and a lady who supplied families with servant-maids, and all three poked their heads out of their windows and watched me disappear.

On reaching Bessy's number, I found, tugging at the bell-rope, a red-peluched young c.o.xcomb. The door was about a fourth part open, and the face of the vicious looking cook was protruding out of it. She dismissed the visitor with curt ceremony.

”My mistress is not at home!”

We nearly trod each other's spurs off as we cannoned against each other in the narrow corridor.

A minute afterwards the countenance of the self-same cook, rounded into complete amiability, again appeared, and she said to me:

”Would you do us the honour to walk in?”

And she held the door wide open for me.

You should have seen the face which my red furbelowed gentleman made at this. It was not enough for him to open his eyes and mouth at me; he stuck his _pince-nez_ on the bridge of his nose as well.

That will mean a duel for me to-morrow.

Meantime, however, I was master of the situation.

I had to go through the kitchen to get to Bessy's room. The kitchen was also the ante-chamber; you hung up your overcoat there. Her cook was her only servant, parlour-maid, chamber-maid, everything.

”Would you kindly walk into the saloon?” urged the servant.

”But announce me beforehand. Here's my card.”

”Beg pardon, but I can't take it; both my hands are doughy.” (She was in the middle of kneading some dough cake or other with b.u.t.ter.) ”Would you kindly put your card between my teeth?”

Thus, like a retriever, she carried in my card between her teeth. A moment afterwards she cried:

”Come in now, please!”

I entered the room which the servant had called a saloon.

n.o.body was there. I looked around me. I found nothing there of the luxurious splendour which had surrounded the young lady formerly in her mother's house; but for all that everything was neat and pretty.

Embroideries, a music-stand with songs upon it, and a fiddle, flower-pots, a cage with exotic birds, Wallachian _Katrinczas_,[107]

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