at we have no piano; we might have had
a quadrille."

Cornudet had not spoken a word or made a movement; he seemed plunged in
serious thought, and now and then tugged furiously at his great beard,
as if trying to add still further to its length. At last, toward
midnight, when they were about to separate, Loiseau, whose gait was far
from steady, suddenly slapped him on the back, saying thickly:

"You're not jolly to-night; why are you so silent, old man?"

Cornudet threw back his head, cast one swift and scornful glance over
the assemblage, and answered:

"I tell you all, you have done an infamous thing!"

He rose, reached the door, and repeating: "Infamous!" disappeared.

A chill fell on all. Loiseau himself looked foolish and disconcerted for
a moment, but soon recovered his aplomb, and, writhing with laughter,
exclaimed:

"Really, you are all too green for anything!"

Pressed for an explanation, he related the "mysteries of the corridor,"
whereat his listeners were hugely amused. The ladies could hardly
contain their delight. The count and Monsieur Carre-Lamadon laughed till
they cried. They could scarcely believe their ears.

"What! you are sure? He wanted----"

"I tell you I saw it with my own eyes."

"And she refused?"

"Because the Prussian was in the next room!"

"Surely you are mistaken?"

"I swear I'm telling you the truth."

The count was choking with laughter. The manufacturer held his sides.
Loiseau continued:

"So you may well imagine he doesn't think this evening's business at all
amusing."

And all three began to laugh again, choking, coughing, almost ill with
merriment.

Then they separated. But Madame Loiseau, who was nothing if not
spiteful, remarked to her husband as they were on the way to bed that
"that stuck-up little minx of a Carre-Lamadon had laughed on the wrong
side of her mouth all the evening."

"You know," she said, "when women run after uniforms it's all the same
to them whether the men who wear them are French or Prussian. It's
perfectly sickening!"

The next morning the snow showed dazzling white tinder a clear winter
sun. The coach, ready at last, waited before the door; while a flock of
white pigeons, with pink eyes spotted in the centres with black, puffed
out their white feathers and walked sedately between the legs of the six
horses, picking at the steaming manure.

The driver, wrapped in his sheepskin coat, was smoking a pipe on the
box, and all the pas