“Someone for you, then? A lover, perhaps, my faithful Madeleine? The world is so foolish nowadays that even you might take it into your head to marry and leave me. Come, serve my dinner quickly, and if the gentleman with the decoration calls--you know whom I mean?” “The tall, thin gentleman?” “Yes. Show him into the drawing-room.” “A gentleman by himself into the drawing-room? “No, sir, no. The floor was waxed only yesterday, and the furniture’s not yet in order.” “Very well! I’ll see him in here.” My uncle went into the dining-room underneath me, and for twenty minutes I heard nothing more of him, save the ring of his wineglass as he struck on it to summon Madeleine. He had hardly finished dinner when there came a ring at the street door. Some one asked for M. Mouillard, the gentleman with the decoration, I suppose, for Madeleine showed him in, and I could tell by the noise of his chair that my uncle had risen to receive his visitor. They sat down and entered into conversation. An indistinct murmur reached me through the ceiling. Occasionally a clearer sound struck my ear, and I thought I knew that high, resonant voice. It was no doubt delusion, still it beset me there in the silence of the library, haunting my thoughts as they wandered restlessly in search of occupation. I tried to recollect all the men with fluty voices that I had ever met in Bourges: a corn-factor from the Place St. Jean; Rollet, the sacristan; a fat manufacturer, who used to get my uncle to draw up petitions for him claiming relief from taxation. I hunted feverishly in my memory as the light died away from the windows, and the towers of St. Stephen’s gradually lost the glowing aureole conferred on them by the setting sun. After about an hour the conversation grew heated. My uncle coughed, the flute became shrill. I caught these fragments of their dialogue. “No, Monsieur!” “Yes, Monsieur!” “But the law?” “Is as I tell you.” “But this is tyranny!” “Then our business is at an end.” Apparently it was not, though; for the conversation gradually sank down the scale to a monotonous murmur. A second hour passed, and yet a third. What could this interminable visit portend? It was near eleven o’clock. A ray from the rising moon shone between the trees in the garden. A big black cat crept across the lawn, shaking its wet paws. In the darkness it looked like a tiger. In my mind’s eye I saw Madeleine sitting with her eyes fixed on her dead hearth, telling her beads, her thoughts running with mine: “It is years since Monsieur Mouillard was up at such an hour.” Still she waited, for never had any hand but hers shot the bolt of the street door; the house would not be shut if shut by any other than herself. At last the dining-room door opened. “Let me show you a light; take care of the stairs.”