CHAPTER XVI

A FALSE ALARM

Every time I visit Paris, which, unhappily, is too often, it rains in torrents.  It makes no difference whether I change the time of starting from that which I had fixed upon at first, stop on the way, travel at night, resort, in short, to a thousand devices to deceive the barometer-at ten leagues from Paris the clouds begin to pile up and I get out of the train amidst a general deluge.

On the occasion of my last visit I found myself as usual in the street, followed by a street porter carrying my luggage and addressing despairing signals to all the cabs trotting quickly past amid the driving rain.  After ten minutes of futile efforts a driver, more sensible than the others, and hidden in his triple cape, checks his horses.  With a single bound I am beside the cab, and opening, the door with a kind of frenzy, jump in.

Unfortunately, while I am accomplishing all this on one side, a gentleman, similarly circumstanced, opens the other door and also jumps in.  It is easy to understand that there ensues a collision.

“Devil take you!” said my rival, apparently inclined to push still farther forward.

I was about to answer him, and pretty sharply, too, for I hail from the south of France and am rather hotheaded, when our eyes met.  We looked one another in the face like two lions over a single sheep, and suddenly we both burst out laughing.  This angry gentleman was Oscar V., that dear good fellow Oscar, whom I had not seen for ten years, and who is a very old friend of mine, a charming fellow whom I used to play with as a boy.

We embraced, and the driver, who was looking at us through the window, shrugged his shoulders, unable to understand it all.  The two porters, dripping with water, stood, one at each door, with a trunk on his shoulder.  We had the luggage put on the cab and drove off to the Hotel du Louvre, where Oscar insisted on dropping me.

“But you are travelling, too, then?” said I to my friend, after the first moments of expansion.  “Don’t you live in Paris?”

“I live in it as little as possible and have just come up from Les Roches, an old-fashioned little place I inherited from my father, at which I pass a great deal of the year.  Oh! it is not a chateau; it is rustic, countrified, but I like it, and would not change anything about it.  The country around is fresh and green, a clear little river flows past about forty yards from the house, amid the trees; there is a mill in the background, a spreading valley, a steeple and its weather-cock on the horizon, flowers under the windows, and happiness in the house.  Can I grumble?  My wife makes exquisite pastry, which is very agreeable to me and helps to whiten her hands.  By the way, I did not tell you that I am married.  My dear fellow, I came across an angel, and I rightly thought that if I let her slip I should not find her equal.  I did wisely.  But I want to introduce you to my wife and to show you my little place.  When will you come and see me?  It is three hours from Paris—­time to smoke a couple of cigars.  It is settled, then—­I am going back to-morrow morning and I will have a room ready for you.  Give me your card and I will write down my address on it.”