“That is what I call a great lie and little wool,” observed Mistigris.
“You see, I know the Count,” said Oscar.
“Possibly, but you will never be an ambassador,” replied Georges. “If you must talk in a public carriage, learn to talk like me and tell nothing.”
“The mother of mischief is no more than a midge’s sting,” said Mistigris, conclusively.
The Count now got into the chaise, and Pierrotin drove on; perfect silence reigned.
“Well, my good friends,” said the Count, as they reached the wood of Carreau, “we are all as mute as if we were going to execution.”
“A man should know that silence is a bold ’un,” said Mistigris with an air.
“It is a fine day,” remarked Georges.
“What place is that?” asked Oscar, pointing to the château of Franconville, which shows so finely on the slope of the great forest of Saint-Martin.
“What!” said the Count, “you who have been so often to Presles, do not know Franconville when you see it?”
“Monsieur knows more of men than of houses,” said Mistigris.
“A sucking diplomatist may sometimes be oblivious,” exclaimed Georges.
“Remember my name!” cried Oscar in a fury, “it is Oscar Husson, and in ten years’ time I shall be famous.”
After this speech, pronounced with great bravado, Oscar huddled himself into his corner.
“Husson de—what?” asked Mistigris.
“A great family,” replied the Count. “The Hussons de la Cerisaie. The gentleman was born at the foot of the Imperial throne.”
Oscar blushed to the roots of his hair in an agony of alarm. They were about to descend the steep hill by la Cave, at the bottom of which, in a narrow valley, on the skirt of the forest of Saint-Martin, stands the splendid château of Presles.
“Gentlemen,” said Monsieur de Sérizy, “I wish you well in your several careers. You, Monsieur le Colonel, make your peace with the King of France; the Czerni-Georges must be on good terms with the Bourbons.—I have no forecast for you, my dear Monsieur Schinner; your fame is already made, and you have won it nobly by splendid work. But you are such a dangerous man that I, who have a wife, should not dare to offer you a commission under my roof.—As to Monsieur Husson, he needs no interest; he is the master of statesmen’s secrets, and can make them tremble.—Monsieur Léger is going to steal a march on the Comte de Sérizy; I only hope that he may hold his own.—Put me down here, Pierrotin, and you can take me up at the same spot tomorrow!” added the Count, who got out, leaving his fellow-travelers quite confounded.
“When you take to your heels you can’t take too much,” remarked Mistigris, seeing how nimbly the traveler vanished in a sunken path.
“Oh, he must be the Count who has taken Franconville; he is going that way,” said Père Léger.
“If ever again I try to humbug in a public carriage I will call myself out,” said the false Schinner. “It is partly your fault too, Mistigris,” said he, giving his boy a rap on his cap.
“Oh, ho! I—who only followed you to Venice,” replied Mistigris. “But play a dog a bad game and slang him.”
“Do you know,” said Georges to Oscar, “that if by any chance that was the Comte de Sérizy, I should be sorry to find myself in your skin, although it is so free from disease.”
Oscar, reminded by these words of his mother’s advice, turned pale, and was quite sobered.
“Here you are, gentlemen,” said Pierrotin, pulling up at a handsome gate.
“What, already?” exclaimed the painter, Georges, and Oscar all in a breath.
“That’s a stiff one!” cried Pierrotin. “Do you mean to say, gentlemen, that neither of you has ever been here before?—There stands the château of Presles!”
“All right,” said Georges, recovering himself. “I am going on to the farm of les Moulineaux,” he added, not choosing to tell his fellow-travelers that he was bound for the house.
“Then you are coming with me,” said Léger.
“How is that?”
“I am the farmer at les Moulineaux. And what do you want of me, Colonel?”
“A taste of your butter,” said Georges, pulling out his portfolio.
“Pierrotin, drop my things at the steward’s,” said Oscar; “I am going straight to the house.” And he plunged into a cross-path without knowing whither it led.
“Hallo! Mr. Ambassador,” cried Pierrotin, “you are going into the forest. If you want to get to the château, go in by the side gate.”
Thus compelled to go in, Oscar made his way into the spacious courtyard with a huge stone-edged flowerbed in the middle, and stone posts all round with chains between. While Père Léger stood watching Oscar, Georges, thunderstruck at hearing the burly farmer describe himself as the owner of les Moulineaux, vanished so nimbly that when the fat man looked round for his Colonel, he could not find him.
At Pierrotin’s request the gate was opened, and he went in with much dignity to deposit the Great Schinner’s multifarious properties at the lodge. Oscar was in dismay at seeing Mistigris and the artist, the witnesses of his brag, really admitted to the château.
In ten minutes Pierrotin had unloaded the chaise of the painter’s paraphernalia, Oscar Husson’s luggage, and the neat leather portmanteau, which he mysteriously confided to the lodge-keeper. Then he turned his machine, cracking his whip energetically, and went on his way to the woods of l’Isle-Adam, his face still wearing the artful expression of a peasant summing up his profits.
Nothing was wanting to his satisfaction. On the morrow he would have his thousand francs.
Oscar, with his tail between his legs, so to speak, wandered round the great court, waiting to see what would become of his traveling companions, when he presently saw Monsieur Moreau come out of the large entrance-hall, known as the guardroom, on to the front steps. The land-steward, who wore a long blue riding-coat down to his heels, had
