“Té! why, I am all wet—”
He hurried to the cab-stand on the Rue d’Amsterdam, and in the crowd which collects in that place owing to the constant arrival of trains at the station he came up against the hard and tightly buttoned uniform of General the Marquis d’Espaillon.
“Bravo, my dear colleague! I was not in the Chamber; but they tell me that you charged the enemy like a —— and routed him, horse and foot.”
As he stood as straight as a lath under his umbrella, the old fellow had a devilish lively eye and moustaches gallantly twisted to the correct angle for the evening of a lucky love adventure.
“G— d— m— s—!” he went on, leaning over toward Numa’s ear with a tone of confidence in gallantry, “you at least can boast of understanding women, by Jove!”
And as the other looked at him sharply, supposing that he was speaking sarcastically:
“Why yes, don’t you remember our discussion about love? You were perfectly right. It is not only the fops and dudes that please the women—I’ve got one now on the string. Never swallowed a better than this one—G— d— m— s—, not even when I was twenty-five and had just left the Academy.”
Roumestan listened to him with his hand on the door of his cab and thought that he was smiling at the old lovesick fool, but what he produced was nothing more than a horrible grimace. His theories about women were just then so extraordinarily upset.—Glory? genius? O, come now! Those are not the things that make them care for you. He felt himself outwitted and disgusted, and had a desire to weep and then a longing to sleep in order not to think any more, especially not to recall further the frightened laugh of that little rascally girl standing straight before him with her waist in disorder and all her neck red and trembling from the interrupted kisses.
But in the agitated course of our life, hours and events link themselves together and follow each other like waves. In place of the nice rest which he hoped to obtain on returning home a new blow was awaiting him at the Ministry, a telegraphic despatch which Méjean had opened in his absence and now handed him, deeply moved:
Hortense dying. She wishes to see you. Come quickly.