“Nonsense, you have been sitting in the square for this last half hour.”

“You were watching me?”

“I was looking at you.”

“But I am sadly in a hurry.”

“I am sure you are not.  Confess that you are in no particular hurry.”

Madame Haggan began to laugh, and said:  “Well, ... no ... not ... very....”

A cab passed close to them, and the little Baron called out:  “Cabman!” and the vehicle stopped, and opening the door, he said:  “Get in, Madame.”

“But, Baron! no, it is impossible to-day; I really cannot.”

“Madame, you are acting very imprudently; get in! people are beginning to look at us, and you will collect a crowd; they will think I am trying to carry you off, and we shall both be arrested; please get in!”

She got in, frightened and bewildered, and he sat down by her side, saying to the cabman:  “Rue de Provence.”

But suddenly she exclaimed:  “Good heavens!  I have forgotten a very important telegram; please drive to the nearest telegraph office first of all.”

The cab stopped a little farther on, in the Rue de Chateaudun, and she said to the Baron:  “Would you kindly get me a fifty centimes telegraph form?  I promised my husband to invite Martelet to dinner to-morrow, and had quite forgotten it.”

When the Baron returned and gave her the blue telegraph form, she wrote in pencil: 

     “My Dear Friend:  I am not at all well.  I am suffering terribly from
     neuralgia, which keeps me in bed.  Impossible to go out.  Come and
     dine to-morrow night, so that I may obtain my pardon.

     “JEANNE.”

She wetted the gum, fastened it carefully, and addressed it to:  “Viscount de Martelet, 240 Rue Miromesnil,” and then, giving it back to the Baron, she said:  “Now, will you be kind enough to throw this into the telegram box.”

AN ADVENTURE

“Come!  Come!” Pierre Dufaille said, shrugging his shoulders.  “What are you talking about, when you say that there are no more adventures?  Say that there are no more adventurous men, and you will be right!  Yes, nobody ventures to trust to chance, in these days, for as soon as there is any slight mystery, or a spice of danger, they draw back.  If, however, a man is willing to go into them blindly, and to run the risk of anything that may happen, he can still meet with adventures, and even I, who never look for them, met with one in my life, and a very startling one; let me tell you.

“I was staying in Florence, and was living very quietly, and all I indulged in, in the way of adventures, was to listen occasionally to the immoral proposals with which every stranger is beset at night on the Piazzo de la Signoria, by some worthy Pandarus or other, with a head like that of a venerable priest.  These excellent fellows generally introduce you to their families, where debauchery is carried on in a very simple, and almost patriarchal fashion, and where one does not run the slightest risk.