For me, I sat there laughing in sheer delight at the excellence of my aim and the shrewdness of my penetration.
What they would have said, I do not know.

The door was flung open and M.
de Fontelles appeared.

He bowed coldly to me and vented on his servants the anger from which he was not yet free, calling them drunken knaves and bidding them see to their horses and lie down in the stable, for he must be on his way by daybreak.

With covert glances at me which implored silence and received the answer of a reassuring nod, they slunk away.

I bowed to M.de Fontelles with a merry smile; I could not conceal my amusement and did not care how it might puzzle him.