“I am very sorry,” said de Sigognac, as he rose to acknowledge her salute, “that the ruinous condition of this château, which verily seems better fitted to receive phantoms than real living guests, would not permit me to offer you more comfortable accommodations. If I had been able to follow my inclinations, I should have lodged you in a luxurious chamber, where you could have reposed between fine linen sheets, under silken curtains, instead of resting uneasily in that worm-eaten old chair.” “Do not be sorry about anything, my lord, I pray you,” answered the _soubrette_ with another brilliant smile; “but for your kindness we should have been in far worse plight; forced to pass the night in the poor old chariot, stuck fast in the mud; exposed to the cutting wind and pelting rain. We should assuredly have found ourselves in wretched case this morning. Besides, this château which you speak of so disparagingly is magnificence itself in comparison with the miserable barns, open to the weather, in which we have sometimes been forced to spend the night, trying to sleep as best we might on bundles of straw, and making light of our misery to keep our courage up.” While the baron and the actress were exchanging civilities the pedant’s chair, unable to support his weight any longer, suddenly gave way under him, and he fell to the floor with a tremendous crash, which startled the whole company. In his fall he had mechanically seized hold of the table-cloth, and so brought nearly all the things upon it clattering down with him. He lay sprawling like a huge turtle in the midst of them until the tyrant, after rubbing his eyes and stretching his burly limbs, came to the rescue, and held out a helping hand, by aid of which the old actor managed with some difficulty to scramble to his feet. “Such an accident as that could never happen to Matamore,” said Hérode, with his resounding laugh; “he might fall into a spider’s web without breaking through it.” “That’s true,” retorted the shadow of a man, in his turn stretching his long attenuated limbs and yawning tremendously, “but then, you know, not everybody has the advantage of being a second Polyphemus, a mountain of flesh and bones, like you, or a big wine-barrel, like our friend Blazius there.”