If this explanation made Julie smile, her own explanations seemed strange to the soubrette; but she suspected nothing wrong. Julie's life was so regular and so pure! Camille concluded simply that her financial position must be in great danger, since she passed the night talking with the solicitor; and she imparted her solicitude to the other servants, who were distressed by it, even while thinking that they must not allow their wages to go unpaid. The footman, who was a friend of Camille, and as such inclined to shield Bastien, went to the hôtel D'Ormonde, but did not find him there. Bastien had understood that his orders were to go back to the wineshop, and thither he had gone; he was sleeping the sleep of the angels, the only slumber supposed to be delicious enough to be compared with that of a drunken man. The carriage was waiting for him at the door, and the groom, his subordinate, had consented to watch the horses on condition that he was supplied with something to warm him on the box every fifteen minutes. The rascals did not reappear at the hôtel until daylight and did not recover their senses for twenty-four hours. Under other circumstances Julie would have dismissed them; but she foresaw that the bacchanalian episode would introduce confusion into the accounts of the romantic episode, in the gossip of the servants' hall and the porter's lodge. That is what actually happened, and as the people in Madame d'Estrelle's service were not ill-disposed toward her, it seemed that nothing was likely to transpire of her actions during that extraordinary night. On the next night, as a matter of prudence the lovers held aloof from each other; but on the night following that, although they had made no appointment, they found themselves once more among the shrubbery in the garden, and repeated with renewed delight all that they had said two days before. They continued in this way, undisturbed and without apparent danger, nothing being easier than for Madame d'Estrelle to steal out of her apartments, even without very great precaution, her people being accustomed to see her go out alone for a breath of fresh air, at a late hour on summer nights.