“And yet you were in his house?”

“I slept on a sofa in his library.”

She gave me a look which was as much as to say, “My poor boy, how very unpractical you are!”

“Go on doing nothing,” she said; “that’s the best you can do.  If my father didn’t think he was expected he would beat a retreat at once.”

At this instant, M. Charnot came back to us, having seen his two trunks and a hatbox placed on top of the omnibus of the Hotel de France.

“That is where you have found rooms for us?”

“Yes, sir.”

“It is now twelve minutes past nine; tell Monsieur Mouillard that we shall call upon him at ten o’clock precisely.”

I went a few steps with them, and saw them into the omnibus, which was whirled off at a fast trot by its two steeds.

When I had lost them from my sight I cast a look around me, and noticed three people standing in line beneath the awning, and gazing upon me with interest.  I recognized Monsieur, Madame, and Mademoiselle Lorinet.  They were all smiling with the same look of contemptuous mockery.  I bowed.  The man alone returned my salute, raising his hat.  By some strange freak of fate, Berthe was again wearing a blue dress.

I went back in the direction of the Rue du Four, happy, though at my wits’ end, forming projects that were mutually destructive; now expatiating in the seventh heaven, now loading myself with the most appalling curses.  I slipped along the streets, concealed beneath my umbrella, for the rain was falling; a great storm-cloud had burst over Bourges, and I blessed the rain which gave me a chance to hide my face.

From the banks of the Voizelle to the old quarter around the cathedral is a rather long walk.  When I turned from the Rue Moyenne, the Boulevard des Italiens of Bourges, into the Rue du Four, a blazing sun was drying the rain on the roofs, and the cuckoo clock at M. Festuquet’s—­a neighbor of my uncle—­was striking the hour of meeting.

I had not been three minutes at the garden door, a key to which had been given me by Madeleine, when M. Charnot appeared with Jeanne on his arm.

“To think that I’ve forgotten my overshoes, which I never fail to take with me to the country!”

“The country, father?” said Jeanne, “why, Bourges is a city!—­”

“To be sure—­to be sure,” answered M. Charnot, who feared he had hurt my feelings.

He put on his spectacles and began to study the old houses around him.

“Yes, a city; really quite a city.”

I do not remember what commonplace I stammered.

Little did I care for M. Charnot’s overshoes or the honor of Bourges at that moment!  On the other side of the wall, a few feet off, I felt the presence of M. Mouillard.  I reflected that I should have to open the door and launch the Academician, without preface, into the presence of the lawyer, stake my life’s happiness, perhaps, on my uncle’s first impressions, play at any rate the decisive move in the game which had been so disastrously opened.