"We don"t even suspect it," said Robineau, filling his gla.s.s with chambertin again, "and that"s the amusing part of it."
"A woman, messieurs," rejoined Edouard, "who laughs at a man because he is really in love with her, such a woman is a flirt, and it seems to me that society is not made up entirely of flirts. How many pa.s.sionate, loving hearts there are, ready to respond to our love! How many women who cannot help loving a scapegrace in secret, and who exert every effort to conceal what they feel!"
"They are innumerable," said Robineau.
"Faith! coquettish or sentimental, artless or pa.s.sionate, they are fascinating," said Alfred; "except, however, when they run after us, follow us and set spies to watch all our movements."
"Oh! the devil! a woman who follows a man is a horrible creature! In the first place, it"s very bad form! But such a thing is never seen now."
"Yes it is, sometimes."
"For my part, messieurs," said Robineau, who persisted in talking constantly, although his tongue was beginning to thicken, "when a woman follows me, and I discover it--for when I don"t discover it, I close my eyes--but when she follows me, I say to her: "My dear love, you are following me about and I don"t like it. When I choose to be with you, I will tell you so; but if I choose to speak to another woman, I don"t need your presence in order to make myself agreeable; on the contrary, it paralyzes my faculties.""
"Bravo! bravo!" laughed the young men; "he talks like Cicero."
"Now for the champagne, messieurs," said Alfred.
"Champagne it is!"
"Yes, champagne!" cried Robineau, "and let"s see who will drink the most; I never get drunk."
The corks popped, they partook freely of the champagne, and soon everybody was speaking at the same moment and each imagined that he was being listened to. But amid the uproar and the outbursts of laughter, Robineau succeeded in making himself heard because he shouted louder than all the others, and the tipsier he grew, the more he insisted upon arguing to prove that wine did not go to his head.
"My dear friend," he said, addressing Alfred, "you haven"t a suspicion that I am in the secret of your love-affairs, of your conquests; that is to say, a sweet little brunette, a widow; I don"t propose to mention her name, because we must be discreet, but it seems that you made love to her in great shape, and that the said Madame de Gerville set out to put your constancy to the test----"
"Madame de Gerville! how do you know that? How do you know Madame de Gerville?"
"In the first place, I haven"t said that it was Madame de Gerville; I didn"t mention any names, did I, messieurs?"
"No, no!" cried the young men, laughing heartily; "oh, no! he knows too much for that! anybody can see that he never gets tight!"
"Why, messieurs," said Robineau, putting a gla.s.s of champagne to his lips, "I swallow this like milk; I have a head of iron!--But all the same, Alfred, the young widow says that you"re a monster! a perfidious wretch! It would seem that she was really taken with you."
"I don"t know whether Madame de Gerville was taken with me; but I confess that I was deeply in love with her,--so much so that for a moment I thought it was serious. Jenny is lively, amiable, clever; but one fine day I met a certain Clara at her house; I didn"t know that she was her particular friend; there are many women who see one another every day, but don"t love one another. This Clara is very attractive too; I told her that I considered her a charming creature--the most natural thing in the world; but it seems that she repeated it to Madame de Gerville, and that Madame de Gerville didn"t like it. Faith! it matters little to me. To the devil with constancy! I know nothing but pleasure myself!--Let us drink to the health of all pretty women!"
"Ah! messieurs, everybody must live! here"s to the ladies in general!"
said Edouard.
"Yes," said Robineau, holding out his gla.s.s to touch Edouard"s, "the ladies in general! and in particular, too; for I have a particular one--ha! ha!--and a solid one, too! Virtue personified, with a wanton air, and plenty of morals--the whole disguised as a milliner."
"Aha! so your d.u.c.h.ess is only a milliner now!" said Alfred! "and you wouldn"t invite her to dine with us!"
"Well, messieurs, what"s the odds, after all? What does rank amount to when beauty is in question?"
"He is right. Haven"t kings been known to marry shepherdesses? The ancients weren"t so proud as we are. Did not Shechem, the son of King Hamor, marry Dinah, the shepherd Jacob"s daughter? Did not one of the Pharaohs of Egypt fall in love with Sarah, a shepherd"s sister?"
"Very good! in that case, long live the grisettes! I know of no one like a grisette for the combination of love and dancing; for patching your breeches when you tear them, for keeping your breakfast hot in the morning and lighting your lamp at night. Just go and ask some fine lady of fashion, such as I saw here to-night, to sew on a b.u.t.ton or mend your suspenders--you"d be well received, wouldn"t you?--Long live the grisettes! I stick to that!"
"Long live the grisettes!" echoed the young men, laughing; and they plied Robineau with drink, because he was beginning not to know what he was saying, and that greatly entertained the young men, especially Alfred, who was not sorry to hear him contradict, when he was drunk, the lies into which his self-conceit had led him when he was sober.--Liars should never drink too much. The old proverb, _in vino veritas_, is true. How many people there are who would make fools of themselves in their cups, if they did not take care to keep sober! What reckless admissions, what piquant confessions we should hear, if--But the ladies never get tipsy!
"So it seems, Robineau, you"ve a very pretty milliner for a mistress?"
said Alfred, filling his friend"s gla.s.s.
"Pretty, messieurs! Why, I don"t mean to say that her face is absolutely beyond criticism; and there are some defects in the contour, too. But her figure! oh! it"s like a model! If she was here, I"d have her stand up on this table, so that you could admire her. In short, she is Fifine!
that tells the whole story!"
"Ah! her name is Fifine, is it?"
"Yes, messieurs; a charming girl! a regular dragon! who has never been able to resist an invitation to drink,--that is when she took a fancy to the man."
"And she took a fancy to you at once, I suppose?"
"Oh, yes! instantly; that is to say, she made me run about a good deal.
And the boxes I carried! and the rolls I paid for! How I did pay for them! She is decidedly fond of rolls, is Fifine.--No matter; here"s her health, messieurs!"
"Fifine"s health!" replied the young men. This toast moved Robineau to tears; he took out his handkerchief to wipe his eyes, and pulled from his pocket with it, and scattered about the floor and on the table, all the cakes he had purloined, which had became as flat as pie crust. The young men roared with laughter, and Alfred emptied Robineau"s other pocket on his plate, crying:
"Here"s a provident fellow, messieurs; he put his dessert in his pocket."
"It was for my canary, messieurs," faltered Robineau, dumfounded for an instant by the spectacle of the little cakes; "for Fifine"s canary, I mean, who says "kiss me quick" like a starling.--Still, you understand, it was only a joke, a wager; I am not reduced to that means of getting bird food. Not that the loss of my twenty-one francs doesn"t embarra.s.s me a good deal; but----"
"I thought you had lost more than three hundred?" said Alfred.
"The deuce! three hundred francs! A copying clerk at fifteen hundred francs a year! Why, that would be more than two months" salary!"
"You are mistaken; you earn a hundred louis, and you are soon to have an increase."
"Nonsense! A hundred louis! And as for getting an increase, my deputy-chief, who rules the roost, told me only this morning that, if I didn"t write better, they would be obliged to discharge me. That sounds well from him, when his writing is like fly tracks, and he earns six thousand francs! It seems to me that he ought to write better than me.--Well, messieurs, you don"t seem to be drinking; I was sure that I would beat you all!"
The young men were, in fact, beginning to yawn; Alfred tried in vain to wake them up--he too was overcome with drowsiness. The young men took their hats and bade one another good-night, pretending to be very firm on their legs.
It was broad daylight, and the streets were already alive with workingmen on their way to work; the peasants were returning leisurely to the country from the market, where they had been to sell their vegetables. The fresh, ruddy faces of the husbandman and the mechanic formed a striking contrast to the pallid faces of our young rakes; but the former had slept, while the latter had been up all night and were about to retire when the others were already beginning their day"s work.
Robineau left the hotel with the young men. When he was alone in the street, he had some difficulty in making up his mind what to do; the houses seemed to be moving about, and the very earth to be unstable beneath his feet. He gazed with a frightened expression at the people who pa.s.sed; and it is probable that they detected something peculiar in his face or his costume, for they laughed as they looked at him.
Determined, however, to overcome what he took for a pa.s.sing dizziness, Robineau pulled his hat over his eyes, and, exerting himself to the utmost to maintain the perpendicular, ran all the way home without stopping, and arrived there completely exhausted.
The first person Robineau met on the staircase was Fifine, who was going down to buy some milk for her breakfast.
"What! have you just come home?" she asked Robineau, who was trying vainly to put his key in the lock.
"Yes, my dear love, the party is just done."
"The party! why, it"s been daylight a long while; it"s after six o"clock.--Well! what makes you fumble at your door like that?"
"I don"t know what"s got into my key, Fifine, but it simply won"t go into the lock."
"Give it to me; I"ll find a way to unlock it."
Fifine opened the door, and exclaimed, after looking at Robineau more attentively: