Till to-morrow."

So saying, the abbe turned round, laughing his peculiar laugh, and
reached the door while D'Harmental was reopening his window, determined
to remain there till the next day, if necessary, and only desiring, as a
reward for this long watch, to catch a single glimpse of Bathilde.

The poor gentleman was in love over head and ears.

CHAPTER XXV.

A PRETEXT.

At a few minutes past four D'Harmental saw Buvat turning the corner of
the Rue du Temps-Perdu. The chevalier thought he could recognize in the
worthy writer an air of greater haste than usual, and instead of holding
his stick perpendicularly, as a bourgeois always does when he is
walking, he held it horizontally, like a runner. As to that air of
majesty which had so struck Monsieur Boniface, it had entirely vanished,
and had given place to a slight expression of uneasiness. He could not
be mistaken. Buvat would not return so quickly if he was not uneasy
about Bathilde. Bathilde, then, was suffering.

The chevalier followed Buvat with his eyes till the moment when he
disappeared in his own door. D'Harmental, with reason, imagined that
Buvat would go into Bathilde's room, instead of mounting to his own, and
he hoped that Buvat would open the window to admit the last rays of the
sun, which had been caressing it all day.

But D'Harmental was wrong; Buvat contented himself with raising the
curtain, and pressing his good round face against the window, and
drumming on the panes with his hands; but even this apparition was of
short duration, for he turned round suddenly, as a man does when any one
calls him, and let fall the muslin curtain behind him and disappeared.
D'Harmental presumed that his disappearance was caused by some appeal to
his appetite, and this reminded him, that in his preoccupation about the
obstinacy of that unlucky window in refusing to open, he had forgotten
his own breakfast, which, it must be confessed, to the shame of his
sensibility, was a very great infraction on his habits. Now, however, as
there was no chance that the window would open while his neighbors were
at dinner, the chevalier determined to profit by the interval by dining
himself; consequently he rang for the porter, and ordered him to get
from the confectioner the fattest pullet, and from the fruiterer the
finest fruit that he could find. As to wine, he had still got some
bottles of that which the Abbe Brigaud had sent him.

D'Harmental ate with a certai