Madame Fournichon replied in an equally audible voice, “And what a handsome cavalier!”

The officer, who did not appear insensible to flattery, raised his head and looked first at the host and hostess and then at the hotel.  Fournichon ran rapidly downstairs and appeared at the door.

“Is the house empty?” asked the officer.

“Yes, monsieur; just at present,” replied the host, humiliated; “but it is not usually so.”

However, Dame Fournichon, like most women, was more clear-sighted than her husband, and called out, “If monsieur desires solitude, he will find it here.”

“Yes, my good woman, that is what I desire, at present,” said the officer, who dismounted, threw the bridle to the soldier, and entered the hotel.

He was a man of about thirty-five years of age, but he did not look more than twenty-eight, so carefully was he dressed.  He was tall, with a fine countenance and a distinguished air.

“Ah! good!” said he, “a large room and not a single guest.  But there must be something,” he added, “either in your house or conduct that keeps people away.”

“Neither, monsieur,” replied Madame Fournichon; “only the place is new, and we choose our customers.”

“Oh! very well.”

“For example,” continued she, “for a person like your lordship, we would send away a dozen.”

“Thanks, my kind hostess.”

“Will monsieur taste the wine?” asked M. Fournichon.

“Will monsieur visit the rooms?” added his wife.

“Both, if you please.”

Fournichon descended to the cellar.

“How many people can you lodge here?” asked the captain of the hostess.

“Thirty.”

“That is not enough.”

“Why so, monsieur?”

“I had a project—­but we will speak of it no more.”

“Ah! monsieur, you will find nothing larger, except the Louvre itself.”

“Well; you can lodge thirty people?”

“Yes, doubtless.”

“But for a day?”

“Oh! for a day, forty, or even forty-five.”

“Without making a commotion outside?”—­“We have often eighty soldiers here, on Sundays.”

“And no crowd before the house—­no spying by the neighbors?”

“Mon Dieu! no! our nearest neighbors are a worthy bourgeois, who meddles with no one, and a lady who lives so retired, that although she has been here for three weeks, I have not seen her.”

“That will do excellently.”

“So much the better.”

“And in a month from to-day—­”

“That will be the 26th of October.”

“Precisely.  Well, on that day I hire your inn.”—­“The whole of it?”

“Yes, the whole.  I wish to give a surprise to some countrymen, officers—­or at least—­soldiers:  they will be told to come here.”

“But if it be a surprise—­”

“Oh! if you are curious, or indiscreet—­”

“No, no, monsieur,” cried she.