“All I did was to help you out, and follow you to Venice,” said Mistigris; “but that’s always the way, ‘Fortune belabors the slave.’”

“Let me tell you,” said Georges to his neighbor Oscar, “that if, by chance, that was the Comte de Serizy, I wouldn’t be in your skin for a good deal, healthy as you think it.”

Oscar, remembering his mother’s injunctions, which these words recalled to his mind, turned pale and came to his senses.

“Here you are, messieurs!” cried Pierrotin, pulling up at a fine iron gate.

“Here we are—­where?” said the painter, and Georges, and Oscar all at once.

“Well, well!” exclaimed Pierrotin, “if that doesn’t beat all!  Ah ca, monsieurs, have none of you been here before?  Why, this is the chateau de Presles.”

“Oh, yes; all right, friend,” said Georges, recovering his audacity.  “But I happen to be going on to Les Moulineaux,” he added, not wishing his companions to know that he was really going to the chateau.

“You don’t say so?  Then you are coming to me,” said Pere Leger.

“How so?”

“Why, I’m the farmer at Moulineaux.  Hey, colonel, what brings you there?”

“To taste your butter,” said Georges, pulling out his portfolio.

“Pierrotin,” said Oscar, “leave my things at the steward’s.  I am going straight to the chateau.”

Whereupon Oscar plunged into a narrow path, not knowing, in the least, where he was going.

“Hi!  Monsieur l’ambassadeur,” cried Pere Leger, “that’s the way to the forest; if you really want to get to the chateau, go through the little gate.”

Thus compelled to enter, Oscar disappeared into the grand court-yard.  While Pere Leger stood watching Oscar, Georges, utterly confounded by the discovery that the farmer was the present occupant of Les Moulineaux, has slipped away so adroitly that when the fat countryman looked round for his colonel there was no sign of him.

The iron gates opened at Pierrotin’s demand, and he proudly drove in to deposit with the concierge the thousand and one utensils belonging to the great Schinner.  Oscar was thunderstruck when he became aware that Mistigris and his master, the witnesses of his bravado, were to be installed in the chateau itself.  In ten minutes Pierrotin had discharged the various packages of the painter, the bundles of Oscar Husson, and the pretty little leather portmanteau, which he took from its nest of hay and confided mysteriously to the wife of the concierge.  Then he drove out of the courtyard, cracking his whip, and took the road that led through the forest to Isle-Adam, his face beaming with the sly expression of a peasant who calculates his profits.  Nothing was lacking now to his happiness; on the morrow he would have his thousand francs, and, as a consequence, his magnificent new coach.

CHAPTER VI

The Moreau interior