"He is indeed, I am sorry to say, gone, Monsieur le Comte," replied the procureur; "and in answer to your second interrogatory, I can reply, that he has been gone precisely nine minutes and three quarters; but in regard to the third question, all I can depone is, that I do not at all know--only that he spoke of being absent some three months or more." Angry, vexed, and disappointed, I turned unceremoniously on my heel; and as I went out, I heard a sort of suppressed laugh issue through the wide, unmoved jaws of the procureur, whose imperturbable countenance announced nothing in the least like mirth; and yet I am certain that he was at that moment laughing most heartily at the deceit he had put upon me; for, as I afterwards learned, the Chevalier was in his house at the very time. The distance between Lourdes and the château was narrowed speedily; and on my arrival, I found the domestic microcosm I had left behind sound asleep an hour before, now just beginning to buzz. My father had not yet quitted his own room, but the servants were all bustling about in the preparations of the morning; and as I rode up, old Houssaye himself, recovered from his drunkenness, sneaked into the court like a beaten dog--not that he was at all ashamed of having been drunk--it was a part of his profession; but upon the road he had heard my adventures of the night before detailed in very glowing language; and he justly feared that the indignation of the whole household would fall upon his head for having been absent in the moment of danger. Beckoning him to speak to me, I gave him a hint that I had been tender of his name, and that, if he chose to keep his own counsel, he might yet pass scathless from the rest of the family. "I shall punish you myself, Maître Houssaye," continued I; "for I _will_ teach you to get drunk at proper times and seasons only." "As I hope to live," answered the trumpeter, "I did but drink two cups; and you well know, monsieur, that two cups of wine to me, or the _maître d'hôtel_, who have drunk so many hundred tuns in our lives, is but as a cup of cold water to another man. They must have been drugged those two cups--for a certainty, they must have been drugged."