"I! it is impossible! He is my friend, that little dwarf; I would like to embrace him. Poor boy! he wanted pomade; I told him I hadn't any. He insisted on having some, and declared that a barber ought to make pomade. Poor fellow!" "And you beat him because he asked you for some pomade! A pretty subject for a quarrel that!" "I, beat him! Who says that?--He said to me: 'Do you know how to make hair grow? give me a receipt. Do you think that by mixing soot with horse droppings one would obtain a good result?'--Ha! ha! stupid nonsense that!--Where's our neighbor?" "I tell you again that he has gone home to bed, father, and that you would do well to do the same, instead of staying in this room." "Poor little solicitor! Mon Dieu! such a little fellow!--Think of beating a mere piece of a man! It's outrageous! And if I knew the villain who did it!--To be sure, you can't make pomade with horse droppings and soot--nonsense! It's making fun of a barber to ask him such questions!--The idea of putting pomade made like that on your customers' heads! Never! What do you take me for?--Embrace me! Someone has made a bump on your forehead, let me shed tears on it." "For heaven's sake, father, go to your room! Listen; the thunder is very loud! Everybody in the house has gone to bed, and I would like to do the same. You will be much more comfortable in bed." "Isn't our neighbor coming back?" "In such weather as this, when the rain is falling in torrents! when the sky is so black!--Ah! what a flash! it is frightful!--Who on earth do you suppose would go out in such horrible weather?--If my deadliest enemy were in my house, I would not turn him out of doors!" At that moment, someone knocked at the barber's door. Ambroisine was thunderstruck, and Master Hugonnet hiccoughed: "There--you hear--someone knocked; it's our neighbor come back." "Oh, no! it is impossible," said Ambroisine; "it cannot be he. We must have been mistaken; it was the roar of the storm that we heard." Two more blows, struck with a feeble hand, but very near together, removed all doubt from the girl's mind. She shuddered, unable to assign a cause for her emotion; but she hastily seized a lamp and darted into the hall that led to the street door, exclaiming: "Somebody out of doors in this terrible storm! I must not keep him waiting." She drew the bolts and opened the heavy door. A woman stood before her, pale, dishevelled, trembling, and with water dripping from all her garments. Ambroisine uttered a cry and stood for a moment without moving; she could not believe her eyes, she was suffocated with emotion. "Bathilde!" she whispered; "you--in this condition! No, no! it is impossible!"