He went downstairs in a flutter of excitement. Not for four generations, so far as he was aware, had such an event occurred in the Hôtel des Grottes. Members of the family, of course, had stayed there without charge. Once, towards the end of the Second Empire, a Minister of the Interior had occupied the _chambre d’honneur_, and had gone away without paying his bill; but that remained a bad black debt in the books of the hotel. Never had a stranger been an honoured guest. He had offered the position, it is true, to Corinna; but then he was in love with Corinna, which makes all the difference. The French are not instinctively hospitable; when they are seized, however, by the impulse of hospitality, all that they have is yours, down to the last crust in the larder; but they are fully conscious of their own generosity, they feel the tremendousness of the spiritual wave. So Bigourdin, kindest-hearted of men, lumbered downstairs aglow with a sense of altruistic adventure. In the vestibule he met Félise who had lingered there in order to obtain from Martin a _compte rendu_ of the household and the neighbourhood. Things had gone none too well—Monsieur Peyrian, one of their regular commercial travellers, having discovered a black-beetle in his bread, had gone to the Hôtel du Cygne. The baker had indignantly repudiated the black-beetle, his own black-beetles being apparently of an entirely different species. Another baker had been appointed, whose only defect was his inability to bake bread. The _brave_ Madame Thuillier, who had been called in to superintend the factory, had quarrelled, after two days, with everybody, and had gone off in dudgeon because she did not eat at the _patron’s_ table. Then they had lost two of their best hands, one a young married woman who was reluctantly compelled to add to the population of France, and the other a girl who was discharged for laying false information against the very respectable and much married Baptiste, saying that he had pinched her. The old Mère Maquoise, _marchande de quatre saisons_, who was reputed to have known Général Bigourdin, was dead, and one of the hotel omnibus horses had come down on its knees. Félise, forgetful of the Maison de Blanc and Nôtre Dame, wrung her hands. She had descended from fairyland into life’s dear and important realities. “It’s desolating, what you tell me,” she cried. “And all because you went away and left us,” said Martin. “She is not going to leave us again!” cried Bigourdin, swooping down on her and carrying her off. In the prim little salon he hugged her again and said gripping her hands: