Thibault was lost in conjectures as to the meaning of all this coquetry, when all of a sudden a dry, grating noise, as if some hard body coming in contact with a pane of glass, made him start. Madame Suzanne started too, and immediately put out the lights. The shoe-maker then heard her step softly to the window, and cautiously open it; whereupon there followed some whisperings, of which Thibault could not catch the words, but, by drawing the curtain a little aside, he was able to distinguish in the darkness the figure of a man of gigantic stature, who appeared to be climbing through the window.
Thibault instantly recalled his adventure with the unknown combatant, whose mantle he had clung to, and whom he had so triumphantly disposed of by hitting him on the forehead with a stone. As far as he could make out, this would be the same window from which the giant had descended when he made use of Thibault’s two shoulders as a ladder. The surmise of identity was, undoubtedly, founded on a logical conclusion. As a man was now climbing in at the window, a man could very well have been climbing down from it; and if a man did climb down from it—unless, of course, Madam Magloire’s acquaintances were many in number, and she had a great variety of tastes—if a man did climb down from it, in all probability, it was the same man who, at this moment was climbing in.
But whoever this nocturnal visitor might be, Madame Suzanne held out her hand to the intruder, who took a heavy jump into the room, which made the floor tremble and set all the furniture shaking. The apparition was certainly not a spirit, but a corporeal body, and moreover one that came under the category of heavy bodies.
“Oh! take care, my lord,” Madame Suzanne’s voice was heard to say, “heavily as my husband sleeps, if you make such a noise as that, you will wake him up.”
“By the devil and his horns! my fair friend,” replied the stranger. “I cannot alight like a bird!” and Thibault recognised the voice as that of the man with whom he had had the altercation a night or two before. “Although while I was waiting under your window for the happy moment, my heart was so sick with longing that I felt as if wings must grow ere long, to bear me up into this dear wished-for little room.”
“And I too, my lord,” replied Madame Magloire with a simper, “I too was troubled to leave you outside to freeze in the cold wind, but the guest who was with us this evening only left us half an hour ago.”
“And what have you been doing, my dear one, during this last half hour?”
“I was obliged to help Monsieur Magloire, my lord, and to make sure that he would not come and interrupt us.”
“You were right as you always are, my heart’s love.”
“My lord is too kind,” replied Suzanne—or, more correctly, tried to reply, for her last words were interrupted as if by some foreign body being placed upon her lips, which prevented her from finishing the sentence; and at the same moment, Thibault heard a sound which was remarkably like that of a kiss. The wretched man was beginning to understand the extent of the disappointment of which he was again the victim. His reflections were interrupted by the voice of the new-comer, who coughed two or three times.