"Monsieur le comte particularly told me a colonel, an aide-de-camp of
Mina," insisted the girl.

"I am not a colonel," replied Georges.

"But isn't your name Georges?"

"What's all this?" said the steward, intervening.

"Monsieur, my name is Georges Marest; I am the son of a rich wholesale
ironmonger in the rue Saint-Martin; I come on business to Monsieur le
Comte de Serizy from Maitre Crottat, a notary, whose second clerk I
am."

"And I," said the girl, "am telling him that monseigneur said to me:
'There'll come a colonel named Czerni-Georges, aide-de-camp to Mina;
he'll come by Pierrotin's coach; if he asks for me show him into the
waiting-room.'"

"Evidently," said the clerk, "the count is a traveller who came down
with us in Pierrotin's coucou; if it hadn't been for the politeness of
a young man he'd have come as a rabbit."

"A rabbit! in Pierrotin's coucou!" exclaimed Moreau and the
poultry-girl together.

"I am sure of it, from what this girl is now saying," said Georges.

"How so?" asked the steward.