In a day you will have time to visit a city which is well worth the trouble, and I will see that you are taken to the nearest station, so that you can be at San Diego at the appointed time.”

The offer was attractive and welcome. The quartette were assured of finding a good room in a good hotel—to say nothing of the attention promised by this obliging personage.

“Gentlemen, do you accept?”

“We accept,” replied Zorn, whom hunger and fatigue disposed to welcome such an invitation.

“Agreed,” replied the American. “We start at once. In twenty minutes we shall be there, and you will thank me, I am sure.”

We need scarcely say that after the cheers provoked by the burlesque serenade the windows of the houses were shut. With its lights extinguished, the village of Freschal was again plunged in sleep.

The American and the four artistes went to the car, put down their instruments, and placed themselves behind them, while the American installed himself forward next to the engineer. A lever was touched, the electric accumulators worked, the vehicle trembled, and began to get up a rapid rate of speed, travelling westward.

A quarter of an hour afterwards an immense whitish light appeared, as if it were a dazzling diffusion of lunar rays. This was the town, the existence of which none of the Parisians had suspected.

The car stopped, and Frascolin said, —

“Here we are on the shore.”

“The shore—no,” replied the American, “but a watercourse we have to cross.”

“And how?” asked Pinchinat.

“By means of this boat in which the car is carried.”

It was one of the ferry boats, so numerous in the United States, and on it the car was placed with its passengers. Probably the ferry boat was worked by electricity, for there was no steam, and in two minutes they were on the other side of the watercourse, alongside a quay. The car resumed its course along some country roads, and entered a park over which aerial appliances poured an intense light. The gate of the park gave access to a wide and long road paved with sonorous flags. Five minutes later the artistes descended at the steps of a comfortable hotel, where they were received with a welcome that augured well, thanks to a word from the American. They were immediately placed before a well-served table, and supped with good appetite, as may be believed.

The repast over, the major-domo led them to a spacious chamber lighted by incandescent lamps, to which shades were fitted, so as to shut out nearly all the light at will. Then, postponing to the morrow the explanation of all these marvels, they slept in the four beds placed in the four angles of the room, and snored with that extraordinary simultaneity which had given the Quartette Party its renown.

CHAPTER III.

Next morning at seven o’clock, these words, or rather these cries, resounded in the room after a startling imitation of a trumpet-call—something like the reveilée.

“Now then! Whoop! On your feet; and in two-time!” vociferated Pinchinat.

Yvernès, the most careless of the four, would have preferred three-time, and even four-time, to disengage himself from the warm coverings of his bed. But he had to follow the example of his comrades, and leave the horizontal for the vertical.

“We have not a minute to lose—not one!” observed “his highness.”

“Yes,” replied Zorn, “for to-morrow we must be at San Diego.”

“Good,” replied Yvernès; “half-a-day will suffice for us to visit the town of this amiable American.”

“What astonishes me,” added Frascolin, “is that there is an important city in the neighbourhood of Freschal. How could our driver have forgotten to tell us about it?”

“The point is that we should be here, my old G key,” said Pinchinat. “And here we are.”

Through the large windows the light was pouring into the room, and the view extended for a mile down a superb road planted with trees.

The four friends proceeded to their toilette in a comfortable cabinet—a quick and easy task, for it was fitted with all the latest inventions, taps graduated thermometrically for hot water and cold water, basins emptying automatically, hot baths, hot irons, sprays of perfumes, ventilators worked by voltaic currents, brushes moved mechanically, some for the head, some for the clothes, some for the boots, either to clean the dust off them, or to black them. And then there were the buttons of the bells and telephones communicating with every part of the establishment. And not only could Sebastien Zorn and his companions obtain communication with every part of the. hotel, but with the different quarters of the town, and perhaps—such was Pinchinat’s opinion—with every town in the United States of America.

“Or even in the two worlds,” added Yvernès. But before they had an opportunity of trying the experiment, a message was telephoned to them at forty-seven minutes past seven, as follows: —

“Calistus Munbar presents his morning civilities to each of the honourable members of the Quartette Party, and begs them to descend as soon as they are ready to the dining-room of the Excelsior Hotel, where their first breakfast awaits them.”

“Excelsior Hotel!” said Yvernès. “The name of this caravanserai is superb.”

“Calistus Munbar, that is our obliging American,” remarked Pinchinat. “And the name is splendid.”

“My friends,” said the ‘cellist, whose stomach was as imperious as its proprietor; “as breakfast is on the table, let us breakfast, and then—”

“And then take a run through the town,” added Frascolin. “But what is this town?”

Our Parisians were dressed or nearly so. Pinchinat replied telephonically that in less than five minutes they would do honour to the invitation of Mr. Calistus Munbar. And when their toilette was finished, they walked to a lift which deposited them in the large hall of the hotel, at the end of which was the door of the dining-room, an immense saloon gleaming with gilding.

“I am yours, gentlemen, always yours.”

It was the man of the night before who had just uttered this phrase of six words. He belonged to that type of personages who may be said to introduce themselves. It seems as though we had known them always.

Calistus Munbar was between fifty and sixty years of age, but he did not look more than forty-five. He was above the usual height, rather stout, his limbs long and strong, and every movement vigorous and healthy.

Zorn and his friends had many times met with people of this type, which is not rare in the United States. Calistus Munbar’s head was enormous, round, with hair still fair and curly, shaking like leaves in a breeze; his features were highly coloured, his beard long, yellow, divided into points; moustache shaven; mouth, with the corners raised, smiling, satirical perhaps; teeth white as ivory; nose rather large at the end, with quivering nostrils, marked at the base of the forehead with two vertical folds supporting an eyeglass fastened to a thread of silver as fine and supple as a thread of silk. Behind the glasses gleamed an eye always in movement, with a greenish iris and a pupil glowing like fire.

Calistus Munbar wore a very ample loose jacket of brown diagonal stuff. From the side pocket peeped a handkerchief with a pattern on it.