"Gone!" cried Adrienne; "gone without me!--Gracious heaven! what can be the meaning of all this?" Then, after a moment's reflection, she resumed, "Please to fetch me a coach."
The two women looked at each other, and shrugged their shoulders."I entreat you, madame," continued Adrienne, with forced calmness in her voice, "to fetch me a coach since M.Baleinier is gone without me.I wish to leave this place."
"Come, come, madame," said the tall woman, who was called "Tomboy,"
without appearing to listen to what Adrienne asked, "it is time for you to go to bed."
"To go to bed!" cried Mdlle.Cardoville, in alarm."This is really enough to drive one mad." Then, addressing the two women, she added:
"What is this house? where am I? answer!"
"You are in a house," said Tomboy, in a rough voice, "where you must not make a row from the window, as you did just now."
"And where you must not put out the lamp as you have done," added the other woman, who was called Gervaise, "or else we shall have a crow to pick with you."
Adrienne, unable to utter a word, and trembling with fear, looked in a kind of stupor from one to the other of these horrible women; her reason strove in vain to comprehend what was passing around her.Suddenly she thought she had guessed it, and exclaimed: "I see there is a mistake here.I do not understand how, but there is a mistake.You take me for some one else.Do you know who I am? My name is Adrienne de Cardoville You see, therefore, that I am at liberty to leave this house; no one in the world has the right to detain me.I command you, then, to fetch me a coach immediately.If there are none in this quarter, let me have some one to accompany me home to the Rue de Babylone, Saint-Dizier House.I will reward such a person liberally, and you also."