They were just about to take their seats at table when the innkeeper appeared in person.  He was a former horse dealer—­a large, asthmatic individual, always wheezing, coughing, and clearing his throat.  Follenvie was his patronymic.

He called: 

“Mademoiselle Elisabeth Rousset?”

Boule de Suif started, and turned round.

“That is my name.”

“Mademoiselle, the Prussian officer wishes to speak to you immediately.”

“To me?”

“Yes; if you are Mademoiselle Elisabeth Rousset.”

She hesitated, reflected a moment, and then declared roundly: 

“That may be; but I’m not going.”

They moved restlessly around her; every one wondered and speculated as to the cause of this order.  The count approached: 

“You are wrong, madame, for your refusal may bring trouble not only on yourself but also on all your companions.  It never pays to resist those in authority.  Your compliance with this request cannot possibly be fraught with any danger; it has probably been made because some formality or other was forgotten.”

All added their voices to that of the count; Boule de Suif was begged, urged, lectured, and at last convinced; every one was afraid of the complications which might result from headstrong action on her part.  She said finally: 

“I am doing it for your sakes, remember that!”

The countess took her hand.

“And we are grateful to you.”

She left the room.  All waited for her return before commencing the meal.  Each was distressed that he or she had not been sent for rather than this impulsive, quick-tempered girl, and each mentally rehearsed platitudes in case of being summoned also.

But at the end of ten minutes she reappeared breathing hard, crimson with indignation.

“Oh! the scoundrel! the scoundrel!” she stammered.

All were anxious to know what had happened; but she declined to enlighten them, and when the count pressed the point, she silenced him with much dignity, saying: 

“No; the matter has nothing to do with you, and I cannot speak of it.”

Then they took their places round a high soup tureen, from which issued an odor of cabbage.  In spite of this coincidence, the supper was cheerful.  The cider was good; the Loiseaus and the nuns drank it from motives of economy.  The others ordered wine; Cornudet demanded beer.  He had his own fashion of uncorking the bottle and making the beer foam, gazing at it as he inclined his glass and then raised it to a position between the lamp and his eye that he might judge of its color.  When he drank, his great beard, which matched the color of his favorite beverage, seemed to tremble with affection; his eyes positively squinted in the endeavor not to lose sight of the beloved glass, and he looked for all the world as if he were fulfilling the only function for which he was born.  He seemed to have established in his mind an affinity between the two great passions of his life—­pale ale and revolution—­and assuredly he could not taste the one without dreaming of the other.