"I thought you'd like to know about the Tapottes, you see--and I was dying to tell you. I went to your rooms last night between eight and nine, and you were out; so I thought the only sure way was to come here--I know you never miss Bollinet's Lectures. Well, as I was saying, the Tapottes.... Oh, mon cher! I am your debtor for life in that matter of Milord Smithfield. It has been the making of me. What do you think? Tapotte is not only going to sit for a companion half-length to Madame's portrait, but he has given me a commission for half-a-dozen ancestors. Fancy--half-a-dozen illustrious dead-and-done Tapottes! What a scope for the imagination! What a bewildering vista of billets de banque! I feel--ah, mon ami! I feel that the wildest visions of my youth are about to be realized, and that I shall see my tailor's bill receipted before I die!"
"I'm delighted," said I, "that Tapotte has turned up a trump card."
"A trump card? Say a California--a Pactolus--a Golden Calf. Nay, hath not Tapotte two golden calves? Is he not of the precious metal all compact? Stands he not, in the amiable ripeness of his years, a living representative of the Golden Age? 'O bella età dell' oro!'"
And to my horror, he then and there executed a frantic pas seul.
"Gracious powers!" I exclaimed. "Are you mad?"
"Yes--raving mad. Have you any objection?"
"But, my dear fellow--in the face of day--in the streets of Paris! We shall get taken up by the police!"
"Then suppose we get out of the streets of Paris? I'm tired enough, Heaven knows, of cultivating the arid soil of the Pavé. See, it's a glorious afternoon. Let's go somewhere."
"With all my heart. Where?"
"Ah, mon Dieu! ça m'est égal. Enghien--Vincennes--St. Cloud--Versailles ... anywhere you like. Most probably there's a fête going on somewhere, if we only knew where,"