“What was I about to do?  I did not stop to reason, I only wanted to find her, and I would.  I went a few steps without reflecting, but then I suddenly thought:  ’Suppose I should walk into the uncle’s room what should I say?’ And I stood still, with my head a void and my heart beating.  But in a few moments I thought of an answer:  ’Of course, I shall say that I was looking for Rivet’s room to speak to him about an important matter,’ and I began to inspect all the doors, trying to find hers, and at last I took hold of a handle at a venture, turned it and went in.  There was Henriette, sitting on her bed and looking at me in tears.  So I gently turned the key, and going up to her on tiptoe I said:  ‘I forgot to ask you for something to read, mademoiselle.’

“I was stealthily returning to my room when a rough hand seized me and a voice—­it was Rivet’s—­whispered in my ear:  ’So you have not yet quite settled that affair of Morin’s?’

“At seven o’clock the next morning Henriette herself brought me a cup of chocolate.  I never have drunk anything like it, soft, velvety, perfumed, delicious.  I could hardly take away my lips from the cup, and she had hardly left the room when Rivet came in.  He seemed nervous and irritable, like a man who had not slept, and he said to me crossly: 

“’If you go on like this you will end by spoiling the affair of that pig of a Morin!’

“At eight o’clock the aunt arrived.  Our discussion was very short, for they withdrew their complaint, and I left five hundred francs for the poor of the town.  They wanted to keep us for the day, and they arranged an excursion to go and see some ruins.  Henriette made signs to me to stay, behind her parents’ back, and I accepted, but Rivet was determined to go, and though I took him aside and begged and prayed him to do this for me, he appeared quite exasperated and kept saying to me:  ’I have had enough of that pig of a Morin’s affair, do you hear?’

“Of course I was obliged to leave also, and it was one of the hardest moments of my life.  I could have gone on arranging that business as long as I lived, and when we were in the railway carriage, after shaking hands with her in silence, I said to Rivet:  ‘You are a mere brute!’ And he replied:  ‘My dear fellow, you were beginning to annoy me confoundedly.’

“On getting to the Fanal office, I saw a crowd waiting for us, and as soon as they saw us they all exclaimed:  ’Well, have you settled the affair of that pig of a Morin?’ All La Rochelle was excited about it, and Rivet, who had got over his ill-humor on the journey, had great difficulty in keeping himself from laughing as he said:  ’Yes, we have managed it, thanks to Labarbe:  And we went to Morin’s.

“He was sitting in an easy-chair with mustard plasters on his legs and cold bandages on his head, nearly dead with misery.  He was coughing with the short cough of a dying man, without any one knowing how he had caught it, and his wife looked at him like a tigress ready to eat him, and as soon as he saw us he trembled so violently as to make his hands and knees shake, so I said to him immediately:  ’It is all settled, you dirty scamp, but don’t do such a thing again.’