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"For heaven's sake," cried Judith, "go on speaking in low voices, or we shall have a scene here." One or two idlers hung near with an air of curiosity and the huge beuniformed commissionaire watched us with an uncertain eye. I kept a tight hold of Carlotta and drew her more behind the screen of a palm near which we happened to stand. "Madame is right," said Hamdi.
There proved to be no difficulty in doing so; Jules showed himself perfectly amenable to a show of superior force. Racksole took upstairs with him an old commissionaire who had been attached to the outdoor service of the hotel for many years a grey-haired man, wiry as a terrier and strong as a mastiff.
The next morning we were up and dressed at ten o'clock. We went to the 'commissionaire' of the hotel I don't know what a 'commissionaire' is, but that is the man we went to and told him we wanted a guide. He said the national Exposition had drawn such multitudes of Englishmen and Americans to Paris that it would be next to impossible to find a good guide unemployed.
Nay, some good folk had even declared the letters of Napoleon's name to constitute the Apocalyptic cipher! As a last resort, the tchinovniks decided to question Nozdrev, since not only had the latter been the first to mention the dead souls, but also he was supposed to stand on terms of intimacy with Chichikov. Accordingly the Chief of Police dispatched a note by the hand of a commissionaire.
When we came to him he was already partly delirious, but he pointed to a parcel and a letter which he had brought away from his office. The parcel proved to be an empty box and the letter a blank sheet of paper; but the most casual inquiry of the concierge at the Chancellerie elicited the fact that a commissionaire had brought these things in the course of the morning.
And now for a doctor that will understand my case, and listen to reason, as they would call it in Ireland." With this idea uppermost, I walked out into the court-yard to look for a commissionaire to guide me in my search. Around on every side of me stood the various carriages and voitures of the hotel and its inmates, to the full as distinctive and peculiar in character as their owners.
At the end of an hour you discover that the soi disant commissionaire will transact all this affair for a few francs; and, after a tiresome wait in a filthy room, jostled, elbowed, and trampled upon, by boors with sabots, you adjourn to your inn, and begin to feel that you are not in England. Our little party had but few of the miseries here recounted to contend with.
As Racksole examined the window and the outlook, he said to himself that Jules could not escape by that exit, at any rate. He gave a glance up the chimney, and saw that the flue was far too small to admit a man's body. Then he called in the commissionaire, and together they bound Jules firmly to the bedstead, allowing him, however, to lie down.
The car had stopped outside the theatre. Hat in hand, and with his face wreathed in smiles, the commissionaire had thrown open the door. The people on the pavement were nudging one another a famous woman was about to descend. She turned back to Philip. "Come in with me," she begged. "Somehow, I feel cold and lonely to-night.
Having filled in the necessary form, and given it to the commissionaire, Gladys looked round for a seat, and espying one, next to a strikingly handsome girl, she at once appropriated it. There was something about this showy girl that had attracted Gladys.
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