"Parbleu! Tobie keeps pa.s.sing with superb hands," cried Balivan. "It would seem that he doesn"t want to resort to another olive."
"I am waiting for a lucky streak. Ah! now it"s time for us to go out."
Pigeonnier hastily left his seat, and Balivan was obliged to do the same, but he did it unwillingly.
"We had at least half a minute more to stay," he said. "Tobie left too soon."
"Quarter to one!" cried the stout youth, with a glance at the clock.
"Mon Dieu! Madame Pluchonneau, my concierge, is very hard of hearing."
Balivan seized Tobie"s arm as he was edging toward the door while making a pretence of examining the pictures, and led him back to the punch table.
"Come and have a drink," he said.
"But I"ve drunk a great deal already."
"All the more reason. Will you smoke?"
"Yes, with pleasure, if you"ll get me one of your foreign pipes."
"They"re right here; I don"t need to leave the studio; wait a moment, and I"ll fill one for you."
Tobie, who had hoped that the painter would leave him, and had proposed to seize the opportunity to steal away unperceived, was obliged to remain; and he wandered about the studio with a very preoccupied air.
"There, smoke that, and tell me what you think of it," said the painter, offering the young man a narghile of enormous length. "That was Ali Pacha"s pipe."
"The devil! suppose my smoking it should make me a savage beast like him! Never mind, I"ll take the risk. But how am I to light it? it isn"t at all easy, the bowl"s so far away."
"You put a candle on the floor, and then hold the pipe to it."
"All right."
Tobie took one of the candles from the card table, and put it on the floor.
"I beg pardon, messieurs," he said; "but I want it to light Ali Pacha"s pipe."
He had no sooner put the bowl of the pipe, the stem of which he held in his mouth, to the flame of the candle, than there was a loud report, like a pistol-shot, the pipe bowl burst, the candle was tipped over, a dense smoke filled the studio, fragments of pipe flew in all directions, and Tobie narrowly missed swallowing a piece of the stem, which stuck in his throat an instant after the report.
He fell backward to the floor. Everybody was dismayed for a moment, but, after the first fright, roars of laughter arose on all sides, except from the direction of Tobie, who was still gagged, as it were, by the fragment of pipe stem.
"What infernal kind of tobacco is that?" cried Mouillot.
"Balivan must have had a fit of abstraction," said Albert.
The artist put his hand to his head, and looked in the drawer from which he had taken what he supposed to be tobacco.
"Great G.o.d!" he exclaimed. "I see what the trouble is. My infernal pupils insisted on making cartridges this morning for a rifle I wanted to try; one of those that load at the breech. I didn"t notice that I was taking powder instead of tobacco. Poor Tobie! I am terribly distressed.
Well, well! what in the devil"s the matter with him?"
Tobie could not speak, but he pointed to his mouth, which was wide open, and made up a pitiful face. They went hastily to his a.s.sistance, and with a small pair of pincers removed the piece of stem which had stuck between his tongue and his windpipe, like the sound-post of a violin.
"_Sacredie!_" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Tobie, as soon as he could speak; "what an outrage! to give me a pipe filled with powder! That"s a mighty poor joke, messieurs! it might have killed me! I think very highly of Ali Pacha"s narghile!"
Balivan had much difficulty in pacifying the little man, and making him understand that when he filled the pipe he was thinking of something else, which prevented his noticing what he filled it with. Tobie was beginning to recover from his fright, and the game of bouillotte was in progress once more, when shrill cries were heard in the direction of the kitchen, and Balivan recognized his maid-servant"s voice.
"Has Crevette also been trying to smoke one of Ali Pacha"s pipes?" said Mouillot.
"Let us go and see what the trouble is!"
"Let us hasten to succor the Burgundian!"
All the young men hurried after Balivan, Tobie alone excepted; he took advantage of the confusion to leave the house, overjoyed to carry away the change for his olive.
Meanwhile, the painter had reached the kitchen, where he found no one; thence he pa.s.sed into a small, dark room, where his servant slept, and there he discovered Mademoiselle Crevette, with no other clothing than the one garment which Englishwomen blush to name, holding the magnetizer Dupetrain down on the floor, and pounding him vigorously with her fist, shouting the while:
"Ah! you villain! just look at this joker! My faith! that was a fine idea of his! to come into my room while I was asleep, to do--I don"t know what! Luckily, I was only asleep with one eye, and I stopped him just when he"d made up his mind I was too warm, I suppose, for he was pulling off my bedclothes."
They succeeded, not without difficulty, in rescuing Dupetrain from the Burgundian, who would have liked to go on beating him; but when she realized that she was standing before all those young men in her chemise, she suddenly jumped back toward her bed; being, however, a little heavy for gymnastic exercises, she fell sidewise on the mattress, thus exposing the roundest part of her person to the a.s.sembled company.
"Bravo! magnificent!" they exclaimed, clapping their hands. "Come, Crevette, just one more jump! you do it so well! What a full moon! We shall have a fine day to-morrow!"
The Burgundian was furious; she seized her pitcher and held it up in the air.
"If you don"t clear out of my room, I"ll throw it at your heads!"
Balivan, who knew that she was quite capable of doing what she threatened, succeeded in pushing them all out of the room, and they returned to the studio.
"Aha! Monsieur Dupetrain," said Mouillot, "you are a sad rake, it seems."
"That"s a very neat trick," said the painter; "we thought you had gone home, and you had stolen into my servant"s room!"
"He wanted to magnetize her, no doubt."
"Messieurs," said Dupetrain, decidedly embarra.s.sed, "I swear to you that this is nothing of any consequence, and that the Burgundian rustic misapprehended my intentions. For what did I propose to do? simply make an experiment in magnetism on that dull, brutish temperament. I said to myself: "If I can succeed in putting that countrywoman into a trance, what an extraordinary proof it will be of the power of my art!""
"Yes; and he took off Crevette"s bedclothes, so that he could see that dull temperament."
"Messieurs, to put myself in communication with a subject, it is necessary----"
"Enough! we don"t want to hear any more. To the card table!"
"Why! someone is missing," said Mouillot.
"That"s so. Tobie isn"t here. Can he have gone away? It isn"t possible."
They searched the studio, thinking that he had hidden, to play a trick on them; but they found that he had really gone.
"Oh! he"d been itching to go for a long while," said Balivan.