What Happened in the Night Author:James Hopper Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE FISHING OF SUZANNE MONSIEUR LE COLONEL was away at drill. When he had left, an hour before, his neck was bulging and red, his stiff white mustache rose in... more » exclamation points on both sides of his nose, and, hardly in the saddle, he had sunk his spurs savagely into his Anglo- Arab, which, in a few long bounds, had disappeared down the lane leading to the garrison. Since that, judging from the shrieks of bugles, the roar of the " fanfare," and the heavy treading of columns, the garrison had been engaged in relieving, through exercise, Monsieur le Colonel's excessive emotion. Madame la Colonelle was away at her marketing. She had left soon after Monsieur le Colonel, a tan parasol upon her shoulder, with Josephine, the cook, waddling after her, a gigantic basket upon her arm. Madame la Colonelle also was agitated. Her nose was shiny, and in her left hand she held a handkerchief, pressed into a wad, which she frequently slipped beneath her veil, to her eyes. Marie, the maid, was in the basement. Shehad gone there to make sure that the furnace was drawing well. As she was coming up again, however, a sudden lassitude had caused her to sink down upon the steps; where she still sat, still languid with that odd, half-pleasant weariness. She was looking at Cyril, Monsieur le Colonel's orderly, who was blacking Monsieur le Colonel's boots. Cyril's red trousers were turned up at the bottom, his shirt was turned up at the elbows; the vizor of his kepi and his nose were turned up parallelly—so that he looked like a wistful interrogation point. " Ah, mademoiselle," he was saying; " si vous vouliez, si vous vouliez! If you would, if you would!" And the sigh following this exclamation condensed upon the Colonel's boots in a vapory cloud, which the vigorous brush immediately conver...« less