Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 2.djvu/72

 walked. "Captain Paulet for ever!" they cried out, "Captain Paulet for ever!" The troop soon stopped in front of the hotel. "Hallo! father Boutrois, father Boutrois!" they roared out all together. Some tried to force the door; others thumped with the knocker in a most energetic manner; some pulled the bell with incredible violence; and others threw stones at the shutters.

At this uproar I started, imagining that our asylum was to be again attacked; Pauline and her sister were not quite at ease; and at length somebody running hastily down stairs, four steps at a time, the door was opened, and there was a rush, as if the embankments of a ditch had given way. The torrent was headlong; a mixture of voices uttered sounds quite unintelligible to us. "Peter, Paul, Jenny, Eliza, house, everybody, wife, get up! By Jove, they sleep like dormice." One might have thought that the house was on fire. We soon heard doors opening and shutting; there was a noise of tables, an inconceivable uproar, a female servant who was bitterly complaining of indecent treatment, shouts of riotous laughter, and bottles rattling and breaking. Plates, dishes, and glass clashing together, and the winding up of the jack, added to the din; a chinking of money, oaths in English and French occasionally heard amidst this infernal clatter, all made the place a perfect bedlam broke loose. "By Jove it is joy, or I never heard it before," said Dufailli. "What are all these rejoicings for? What does it all mean? Have they captured the Spanish Galleons? But this is not the track for them."

Dufailli cudgelled his brain to make out the cause of all the uproar, which was to me equally inexplicable, when M. Boutrois, with a radiant face, entered, to ask leave to light a fire. "You do not know," said he, "that the 'Revanche' has just come into port. Our Paulet has been carrying on the war in his old way; is he not a fortunate fellow? A capture of three millions (francs) beneath the very cannon of Dover."—"Three millions!" cried Dufailli, "and I not