The voice belonged to a gendarme, who descended toward them and seemed as deeply scandalized at their appearance as they could have been at that of the young ladies.
March explained, in his ineffective German, with every effect of improbability, that they were there by appointment of the manager, and wished to find his room.
The gendarme would not or could not make anything out of it.

He pressed down upon them, and laying a rude hand on a shoulder of either, began to force them back to the door.

The mild nature of the editor might have yielded to his violence, but the martial spirit of General Triscoe was roused.

He shrugged the gendarme's hand from his shoulder, and with a voice as furious as his own required him, in English, to say what the devil he meant.

The gendarme rejoined with equal heat in German; the general's tone rose in anger; the dancing-girls emitted some little shrieks of alarm, and fled noisily up the stairs.