I hadn't been in the house five minutes before Amélie arrived.
"What's the matter?" she demanded, breathlessly.
"Why didn't you drive into the stable as usual?"
"Because I am forbidden to go to Couilly."
I thought she was going to see the joke and laugh. She didn't. She was angry, and I had a hard time to make her see that it was funny. In fact, I did not really make her see it at all, for an hour later, wanting her, I went up to the Quincy side of the road, leaned against the wall, opposite her entrance, and blew my big whistle for ten minutes without attracting her attention.
That attempt at renewing the joke had two results. I must tell you that one of the few friends who has ever been out here felt that the only annoying thing about my being so absolutely alone was that, if anything happened and I needed help, I had no way of letting anyone know. So I promised, and it was agreed with Amélie, that, in need, I should blow my big whistle--it can be heard half a mile. But that was over two years ago. I have never needed help. I have used the whistle to call Dick.
I whistled and whistled and whistled until I was good and mad. Then I began to yell: "Amélie--Mélie--Père!" and they came running out, looking frightened to death, to find me, red in the face, leaning against the wall--on the Quincy side of the road.
When I explained that I wanted some fresh bread to toast and was not allowed to go to their house in Couilly for it, it ceased to be a joke at all.
It was useless for me to laugh, and to explain that an order was an order, and that Couilly was Couilly, whether it was at my gate or down the hill.
Père's anger was funnier than my joke. He saw nothing comic in the situation. To him it was absurd. Monsieur le Général, commandant de la cinquième armée ought to know that I was all right. If he didn't know it, it was high time someone told him.
In his gentle old voice he made quite a harangue.
It was difficult for me to convince him that I was not in the slightest degree annoyed; that I thought it was amusing; that there was nothing personally directed against me in the order; that I was only one of many foreigners inside the zone des armées; that the only way to catch the dangerous ones was to forbid us all to circulate.