“Madame,” said Rosalie, returning to the door of the salon, “his Excellency has ordered dinner for eight, and wants it served at six o’clock. What are we to do?” During Estelle’s conference with her head-woman the two artists and Oscar looked at each other in consternation; their glances were expressive of terrible apprehension. “His Excellency! who is he?” said Joseph Bridau. “Why, Monsieur le Comte de Serizy, of course,” replied little Moreau. “Could it have been the count in the coucou?” said Leon de Lora. “Oh!” exclaimed Oscar, “the Comte de Serizy always travels in his own carriage with four horses.” “How did the Comte de Serizy get here?” said the painter to Madame Moreau, when she returned, much discomfited, to the salon. “I am sure I do not know,” she said. “I cannot explain to myself this sudden arrival; nor do I know what has brought him--And Moreau not here!” “His Excellency wishes Monsieur Schinner to come over to the chateau,” said the gardener, coming to the door of the salon. “And he begs Monsieur Schinner to give him the pleasure to dine with him; also Monsieur Mistigris.” “Done for!” cried the rapin, laughing. “He whom we took for a bourgeois in the coucou was the count. You may well say: ‘Sour are the curses of perversity.’” Oscar was very nearly changed to a pillar of salt; for, at this revelation, his throat felt saltier than the sea. “And you, who talked to him about his wife’s lovers and his skin diseases!” said Mistigris, turning on Oscar. “What does he mean?” exclaimed the steward’s wife, gazing after the two artists, who went away laughing at the expression of Oscar’s face. Oscar remained dumb, confounded, stupefied, hearing nothing, though Madame Moreau questioned him and shook him violently by his arm, which she caught and squeezed. She gained nothing, however, and was forced to leave him in the salon without an answer, for Rosalie appeared again, to ask for linen and silver, and to beg she would go herself and see that the multiplied orders of the count were executed. All the household, together with the gardeners and the concierge and his wife, were going and coming in a confusion that may readily be imagined. The master had fallen upon his own house like a bombshell. From the top of the hill near La Cave, where he left the coach, the count had gone, by the path through the woods well-known to him, to the house of his gamekeeper. The keeper was amazed when he saw his real master. “Is Moreau here?” said the count. “I see his horse.” “No, monseigneur; he means to go to Moulineaux before dinner, and he has left his horse here while he went to the chateau to give a few orders.” “If you value your place,” said the count, “you will take that horse and ride at once to Beaumont, where you will deliver to Monsieur Margueron the note that I shall now write.”