M. le Comte was very happy--his beloved Madame was nearly always by his side, and now he had almost three months of _la petite_ before him. The adored _la petite_! Could any aged man be happier than he? He did not mind his feeling of weakness, the rapid approach of extreme old age did not trouble him. He was happy in the gentle, soothing present. What else mattered, what else could matter? He was interrupted when Gustave came in with his message. "I want you not, go!" he said. "See you not that I arrange myself for repose? Go, and leave me in peace! I see no one when my wife and granddaughter are away." "Yes, but you will see me," said Louise, suddenly bursting into the room, her grass-green hat all awry, her features flushed, her small eyes full of a delighted vengeance. "I have come about your _petite_ Comtesse," said Louise. "See, behold, you will listen!" "Leave us, Gustave," said le Comte, and Gustave closed the door and applied his ear with great skill to the key-hole. "What have you come about?" said the Comte in a voice of high displeasure. "This is my hour for repose. I see no strangers, more particularly those like yourself." The eyes of Louise flashed with anger. "If I suit not your taste, old man," she said, "you have but your granddaughter to blame. She sold me my chapeau in the _établissement_ of your good wife. She goes there each day. Ask her, she cannot deny!" The Comte felt very queer and sick, a kind of giddiness came over him, that terrible faintness from which at times he suffered was approaching, the world looked very dark. Suddenly he pulled himself together. He found his eyes fixed on the hideous grass-green hat, never surely could his little Margot sell anything so frightful to so low-down a customer. "Leave me, I feel faint," he said. "Send to me my man Gustave, and go! I command you to go at once!" Louise looked wildly round her, but the grass-green hat kept on doing its work, it was quite impossible for M. le Comte to believe her story; it was out of his power even for an instant to suppose that the little hands he loved could have touched anything so impossible. "You tell lies, my good girl," he said. "It may be possible that you will drop down dead like Sapphira, who followed the example of Ananias, her husband. Go quickly, before my anger begins to boil. Hasten before I attack you with a pistol! There are times when I lose self-control, and that chapeau--_mon Dieu_! That chapeau! Go at once, I beseech of you, before I do an injury, which may mean _la mort_!" Louise was by now thoroughly frightened. The grand, disdainful manner of _la petite_ Comtesse was nothing to the terrifying manner of le Comte himself.