After the second visit I was left free.  It was then close on midnight.  Up to that time there was nothing in the behavior of the mad Englishman to reward Mrs. Fairbank and the doctor for presenting themselves at his bedside.  He lay half awake, half asleep, with an odd wondering kind of look in his face.  My mistress at parting warned me to be particularly watchful of him toward two in the morning.  The doctor (in case anything happened) left me a large hand bell to ring, which could easily be heard at the house.

Restored to the society of my fair friend, I spread the supper table.  A pate, a sausage, and a few bottles of generous Moselle wine, composed our simple meal.  When persons adore each other, the intoxicating illusion of Love transforms the simplest meal into a banquet.  With immeasurable capacities for enjoyment, we sat down to table.  At the very moment when I placed my fascinating companion in a chair, the infamous Englishman in the next room took that occasion, of all others, to become restless and noisy once more.  He struck with his stick on the floor; he cried out, in a delirious access of terror, “Rigobert!  Rigobert!”

The sound of that lamentable voice, suddenly assailing our ears, terrified my fair friend.  She lost all her charming color in an instant.  “Good heavens!” she exclaimed.  “Who is that in the next room?”

“A mad Englishman.”

“An Englishman?”

“Compose yourself, my angel.  I will quiet him.”

The lamentable voice called out on me again, “Rigobert!  Rigobert!”

My fair friend caught me by the arm.  “Who is he?” she cried.  “What is his name?”

Something in her face struck me as she put that question.  A spasm of jealousy shook me to the soul.  “You know him?” I said.

“His name!” she vehemently repeated; “his name!”

“Francis,” I answered.

“Francis—­what?”

I shrugged my shoulders.  I could neither remember nor pronounce the barbarous English surname.  I could only tell her it began with an “R.”

She dropped back into the chair.  Was she going to faint?  No:  she recovered, and more than recovered, her lost color.  Her eyes flashed superbly.  What did it mean?  Profoundly as I understand women in general, I was puzzled by this woman!

“You know him?” I repeated.

She laughed at me.  “What nonsense!  How should I know him?  Go and quiet the wretch.”

My looking-glass was near.  One glance at it satisfied me that no woman in her senses could prefer the Englishman to Me.  I recovered my self-respect.  I hastened to the Englishman’s bedside.

The moment I appeared he pointed eagerly toward my room.  He overwhelmed me with a torrent of words in his own language.  I made out, from his gestures and his looks, that he had, in some incomprehensible manner, discovered the presence of my guest; and, stranger still, that he was scared by the idea of a person in my room.  I endeavored to compose him on the system which I have already mentioned—­that is to say, I swore at him in my language.  The result not proving satisfactory, I own I shook my fist in his face, and left the bedchamber.