A FINALE
That figure stepped forth and seized her by the arm while saying, in tones quite loud enough for me to hear, "What are you making that noise for here? and who are you? and who, in the fiend's name, is Isidore?"
"O kind sir! O monsieur!" I heard the girl answer. "Oh! please, sir, don't kill me, and don't wake the Princess. Oh! what are you doing in her garden at this hour?"
"Who is Isidore?" the masked one asked sternly.
"O kind sir, he is the coachman. We are to be married soon, and we make a little tryst at night when it is fine above. O sir, if the Princess should wake?"
"Wake! How should she be asleep? Is she not entertaining some Englishman to supper to-night?"
"Ah, monsieur! Ah, mon Dieu! You believe that! 'Tis a cold supper then! Look, monsieur, at the salle-a-manger."
"Bah! She has a boudoir, I suppose?"
"Ah! monsieur, would you believe that of the Princess! And all because she played a little jest upon a foolish Englishman who pesters her with his attentions, a poor half-witted thing, who even now, at this moment, is dilly-dallying at the side-door, thinking he will be let in. Peste! he will wait a long while," and she began to sing a song out of Regnard's new comedy about a man waiting for a lady under an elm, and waiting a mighty long time too—
"Attendez-moi sous l'orme," she sang, "vous m'attendrez longtemps."