Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 3.djvu/208

 a size! If it goes on in this way, I shall pass a sleepless night."

I kept silence, but was compelled to break it when Madame Duflos, exasperated by her sufferings and not knowing how, between the biting and itching, to relieve herself, began to cry out with all her strength.

"Eugene! Eugene! do get up, I beseech you, and be so good as to ask the innkeeper for a light, that we may drive away these cursed animals. Make haste I entreat you, my friend, for I am in hell."

I went down and came up again with a lighted candle, which I put on the table near the lady's bed. As I was but lightly clad, that is to say, with my flags flying in the wind, I retired as quickly as possible, as well out of respect to the modesty of Madame Duflos, as to escape the seductions of an elegant negligénégligé [sic], in which there appeared to me to be some design. But scarcely had I got around the screen when Madame Duflos gave a piteous shriek.

"Ah! what a size, what a monster, I can never have the courage to kill it: how it runs, it will get away. Eugene! Eugene! come here, I supplicate you."

I could not retreat, but, like a second Theseus, I risked all, and approached the bed.

"Where, where," said I, "is this Minotaur, let me exterminate him?"

"I conjure you, Eugene, not to jest in that way—there, there, see how it runs; did you see it on the pillow? how it goes down the bed—what swiftness! It seems to know the fate you have in store for it."

In vain did I use all diligence; I could neither catch nor even see the dangerous animal. I looked and felt every where to discover its hiding place. I made every possible exertion to find it, but in vain. Sleep overpowered us in our endeavours; and if, on waking, by a return to the past, I was led to reflect that Madame Duflos had been more fortunate than Potiphar's wife, I had the pain of thinking that I had not had all the virtue of Joseph.