The door into the kitchen was shut. The
sweetly soft odour of newly cut wood was around me. And all the time that
Afrique was talking I heard clearly, through the shut door and through
the kitchen wall and through the locked door of the _cabinot_ situated
directly across the hall from _la cuisine_, the insane gasping voice of a
girl singing and yelling and screeching and laughing. Finally I
interrupted my speaker to ask what on earth was the matter in the
_cabinot?_--"_C'est la femme allemande qui s'appelle Lily_," Afrique
briefly answered. A little later BANG went the _cabinot_ door, and ROAR
went the familiar coarse voice of the Directeur. "It disturbs him, the
noise," Afrique said. The _cabinot_ door slammed. There was silence.
Heavily steps ascended. Then the song began again, a little more insane
than before; the laughter a little wilder.... "You can't stop her,"
Afrique said admiringly. "A great voice Mademoiselle has, eh? So, as I
was saying, the national debt being conditioned--"
But the experience _a propos les femmes_, which meant and will always
mean more to me than any other, the scene which is a little more
unbelievable than perhaps any scene that it has ever been my privilege to
witness, the incident which (possibly more than any other) revealed to me
those unspeakable foundations upon which are builded with infinite care
such at once ornate and comfortable structures as _La Gloire and Le
Patriotisme_--occurred in this wise.
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