I went downstairs to the kitchen.

“Well, Madeleine, has he gone out?”

“He went at six o’clock, Monsieur Fabien.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“How could I guess?  Never, never does he go out before breakfast.  I never have seen him like this before, not even when his wife died.”

“What can be the matter with him?”

“I think it’s the sale of the practice.  He said to me last night, at the fool of the staircase:  ’I am a brokenhearted man, Madeleine, a broken-hearted man.  I might have got over it, but that monster of ingratitude, that cannibal’—­saving your presence, Monsieur Fabien—­’would not have it so.  If I had him here I don’t know what I should do to him.’”

“Didn’t he tell you what he would do to the cannibal?”

“No.  So I slipped a little note under your door when I went upstairs.”

“Yes.  I am much obliged to you for it.  Is he any calmer this morning?”

“He doesn’t look angry any longer, only I noticed that he had been weeping.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know at all.  Besides, you might as well try to catch up with a deer as with him.”

“That’s true.  I’d better wait for him.  When will he be in?”

“Not before ten.  I can tell you that it’s not once a year that he goes out like this in the morning.”

“But, Madeleine, Jeanne will be here by ten!”

“Oh, is Jeanne her name?”

“Yes.  Monsieur Charnot will be here, too.  And my uncle, whom I was to have prepared for their visit, will know nothing about it, nor even that I slept last night beneath his roof.”

“To tell the truth, Monsieur Fabien, I don’t think you’ve managed well.  Still, there is Dame Fortune, who often doesn’t put in her word till the last moment.”

“Entreat her for me, Madeleine, my dear.”

But Dame Fortune was deaf to prayers.  My uncle did not return, and I could find no fresh expedient.  As I made my way, vexed and unhappy, to the station, I kept asking myself the question that I had been turning over in vain for the last hour: 

“I have said nothing to Monsieur Mouillard.  Had I better say anything now to Monsieur Charnot?”

My fears redoubled when I saw Jeanne and M. Charnot at the windows of the train, as it swept past me into the station.

A minute later she stepped on to the platform, dressed all in gray, with roses in her cheeks, and a pair of gull’s wings in her hat.

M. Charnot shook me by the hand, thoroughly delighted at having escaped from the train and being able to shake himself and tread once more the solid earth.  He asked after my uncle, and when I replied that he was in excellent health, he went to get his luggage.

“Well!” said Jeanne.  “Is all arranged?”

“On the contrary, nothing is.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Not even that.  I have been watching for a favorable opportunity without finding one.  Yesterday evening he was busy with a visitor; this morning he went out at six.  He doesn’t even know that I am in Bourges.”