Amid the commotion, they heard a shrill voice in the courtyard:
“We are going to discharge a few fireworks in honor of the baptism, and to celebrate the birth, of the son of our worthy master, Monsieur le Marquis de Grandvilain and Madame la Marquise de Grandvilain, his spouse.”
No sooner were these words heard, than a sudden change took place on every face, except those of the people who were talking in corners. The men laughed uproariously, the ladies threw aside the shawls and hats which they had hastily donned, and ran to look at themselves in the mirrors, for coquetry is the first sentiment that wakes in the ladies when the others are still benumbed. Then everybody ran to the windows, saying:
“Fireworks! it is fireworks! Oh! what a delightful surprise!”
“Yes,” said the old Marquis de Grandvilain, who had been more frightened than all the others together, “yes, it is a pleasant idea of that devil of a Jasmin. But he ought to have notified me that he intended to surprise me, for then I should have expected it, and it would have--have surprised me less.”
The guests were all at the windows, the ladies in front, the men behind them, so that they were obliged to lean over a little to see; but everybody seemed well pleased, and nobody would have changed his place for another.
The marquis sat alone at a window in his wife’s room.
“You will not be able to see the pieces down below, my dear love,” he said, “but I will explain them to you, and you will be able to see the rockets and serpents perfectly from your bed.”
“Suppose it frightens Chérubin?” said the marchioness, placing her son’s cradle at the foot of the bed.
“Don’t be afraid, marchioness; my son will take after me, he will love the noise and smell of powder.”
Meanwhile, Jasmin, who had followed his master’s orders by levying freely on the cellar, and had made himself, as well as his comrades, very nearly tipsy, seemed to have gone back to his twentieth year; he walked about the courtyard, amid the fireworks, like a general amid his troops.
In the farthest corner of the courtyard the mortars had been placed; they were the heavy artillery, and no more were to be fired until the finale. But as sparks, falling in that direction, might land inside the mortars and set them off before the time for which they were held in reserve, the cook, who was a careful man, and who was acting as Jasmin’s second in command, had brought from his kitchen saucepan covers, a frying-pan, and a dish-pan, and had placed them over the mortars, which were made like stove pipes, but of different dimensions, according to the amount of powder they contained: so that the frying-pan was placed on the largest one, the dish-pan on a smaller size, and the saucepan covers on the smallest ones, all to prevent sparks or lighted fragments of rockets from falling into the mortars.