“Why, you see—” said the grocer, rubbing his hands together.
D’Artagnan crossed one leg over the other, and said, “Planchet, my friend, I am unnerved with extreme surprise; for you are revealing yourself to me under a perfectly new light.”
Planchet, flattered in the highest degree by this remark, continued to rub his hands very hard together. “Ah, ah,” he said, “because I happen to be only slow, you think me, perhaps, a positive fool.”
“Very good, Planchet; very well reasoned.”
“Follow my idea, monsieur, if you please. I said to myself,” continued Planchet, “that, without enjoyment, there is no happiness on this earth.”
“Quite true, what you say, Planchet,” interrupted D’Artagnan.
“At all events, if we cannot obtain pleasure—for pleasure is not so common a thing, after all—let us, at least, get consolations of some kind or another.”
“And so you console yourself?”
“Exactly so.”
“Tell me how you console yourself.”