Restored to the society of my fair friend, I spread the supper table. A pâté, a sausage, and a few bottles of generous Moselle wine, composed our simple meal. When persons adore each other, the intoxicating illusion of Love transforms the simplest meal into a banquet. With immeasurable capacities for enjoyment, we sat down to table. At the very moment when I placed my fascinating companion in a chair, the infamous Englishman in the next room took that occasion, of all others, to become restless and noisy once more. He struck with his stick on the floor; he cried out, in a delirious access of terror, "Rigobert! Rigobert!" The sound of that lamentable voice, suddenly assailing our ears, terrified my fair friend. She lost all her charming color in an instant. "Good heavens!" she exclaimed. "Who is that in the next room?" "A mad Englishman." "An Englishman?" "Compose yourself, my angel. I will quiet him." The lamentable voice called out on me again, "Rigobert! Rigobert!" My fair friend caught me by the arm. "Who is he?" she cried. "What is his name?" Something in her face struck me as she put that question. A spasm of jealousy shook me to the soul. "You know him?" I said. "His name!" she vehemently repeated; "his name!" "Francis," I answered. "Francis--_what_?" I shrugged my shoulders. I could neither remember nor pronounce the barbarous English surname. I could only tell her it began with an "R." She dropped back into the chair. Was she going to faint? No: she recovered, and more than recovered, her lost color. Her eyes flashed superbly. What did it mean? Profoundly as I understand women in general, I was puzzled by _this_ woman! "You know him?" I repeated. She laughed at me. "What nonsense! How should I know him? Go and quiet the wretch." My looking-glass was near. One glance at it satisfied me that no woman in her senses could prefer the Englishman to Me. I recovered my self-respect. I hastened to the Englishman's bedside. The moment I appeared he pointed eagerly toward my room. He overwhelmed me with a torrent of words in his own language. I made out, from his gestures and his looks, that he had, in some incomprehensible manner, discovered the presence of my guest; and, stranger still, that he was scared by the idea of a person in my room. I endeavored to compose him on the system which I have already mentioned--that is to say, I swore at him in _my_ language. The result not proving satisfactory, I own I shook my fist in his face, and left the bedchamber. Returning to my fair friend, I found her walking backward and forward in a state of excitement wonderful to behold. She had not waited for me to fill her glass--she had begun the generous Moselle in my absence. I prevailed on her with difficulty to place herself at the table. Nothing would induce her to eat. "My appetite is gone," she said. "Give me wine."