And he took a step to leave the station.

‘Don’t drive me to despair,’ the other went on with an accent at once pathetic and almost menacing.

‘Please be good enough to look after my bag a moment,’ said the old Englishman, throwing his travelling bag at Leo’s feet.

Straightway he took the arm of the man who had accosted him, led him or rather pushed him to a corner where he hoped not to be overheard, and there spoke to him for a minute in a very rude tone, as it appeared. Then he drew from his pocket some papers, crushed them up, and put them in the hands of the man who had called him uncle. The latter took the papers without thanks, and almost immediately walked away and disappeared.

There is only one hotel at N—; it is no matter for astonishment then, if at the end of several minutes all the personages of this true story found themselves together there. In France every traveller who has the good luck to have a well-dressed lady on his arm is sure of getting the best room in any hotel: and so is established the legend that we are the most polite nation in Europe.

If the room which was given to Leo was the best, it would be rash to conclude from that that it was excellent. There was a big walnut bed, with chintz curtains on which was printed in violet the magic story of Pyramus and Thisbe. The walls were covered with a painted wall-paper, representing a view of Naples with many figures; unfortunately, idle and indiscreet travellers had added pipes and moustaches to all the faces, male and female; and a lot of stupid remarks in prose and in verse, written in blacklead, could be read on the sky and on the sea. On this background were hung several engravings; ‘Louis Philippe taking his Oath to the Charter of 1830’, ‘The First Interview of Julie and Saint-Preux’, ‘The Expectation of Bliss’, and ‘Regrets’, after M. Dubuffe. This room was called the Blue Room, because the two arm-chairs to right and left of the mantelpiece were in Utrecht velvet of that colour; but for many years they had been hidden under covers of grey-glazed cotton with amaranth trimmings.

While the maidservants of the hotel pressed round the new arrival, and offered her their services, Leo, who was not deprived of his good sense although in love, went to the kitchen to order dinner. He had to make use of all his best rhetoric and some means of corruption to obtain the promise of a dinner in private; but his horror was great when he learnt that in the principal dining-room, that is to say, in the room next to his, the officers of the Third Hussars, who were about to relieve the officers of the Third Chasseurs at N—, were intending to join these latter, this very day, in a farewell dinner, at which would reign the greatest cordiality. The host swore by his great gods that, apart from the gaiety natural to all French soldiers, the Hussars and the Chasseurs were known in all the town for their gentleness and good behaviour, and that their proximity would not be awkward in the very slightest for madame; the custom of the officers being to rise from the table before midnight.

As Leo regained the blue room after this assurance, which caused him no little inquietude, he noticed that his Englishman occupied the room next to his. The door was open. The Englishman, sitting before a table on which were a glass and a bottle, was watching the ceiling with deep attention, as if he were counting the flies that walked across it.

‘What do the neighbours matter?’ said Leo to himself. ‘The Englishman will soon be drunk, and the Hussars will go away before midnight.’

When he entered the blue room his first care was to assure himself that the communication doors were fast locked, and that they had bolts. On the side of the Englishman there was a double door; the walls were thick. On the side of the Hussars the partition was thinner, but the door had lock and bolt.

After all, against curiosity, it was a barrier much more efficacious than the blinds of a carriage, and how many people think themselves isolated from the world in a cab.