The infidelity of Clementine Pichon touched his amour-propre a little, but he soon consoled himself for it.
"At least," thought he, "I'll not have to marry an old woman, when there's a young one waiting for me at Fontainebleau. And, moreover, my son has a name, and a very presentable name. Fougas would be a great deal better, but Langevin is not bad."
He arrived, on the 2d of September, at six o'clock in the evening, at that large and beautiful but somewhat stupid city which constitutes the Versailles of Lorraine. His heart was beating fit to burst. To recuperate his energies, he took a good dinner. The landlord, when catechized at dessert, gave him the very best accounts of M. Victor Langevin: a man still young, married for the past six years, father of a boy and a girl, respected in the neighborhood, and prosperous in his affairs.
"I was sure of it!" said Fougas.
He poured down a bumper of a certain kirsch-wasser from the Black Forest, which he fancied delicious with his maccaroni.
The same evening, M. Langevin related to his wife how, on returning from the club at ten o'clock, he had been brutally accosted by a drunken man. He at first took him for a robber, and prepared to defend himself; but the man contented himself with embracing him, and then ran away with all his might. This singular accident threw the two spouses into a series of conjectures, each less probable than the preceding. But as they were both young, and had been married barely seven years, they soon changed the subject.
The next morning, Fougas, laden down like a miller's ass with bon-bons, presented himself at M. Langevin's. In order to make himself welcome to his two grandchildren, he had skimmed the shop of the celebrated Lebègue—the Boissier of Nancy. The servant who opened the door for him asked if he were the gentleman her master expected.
"Good!" said he; "my letter has come?"
"Yes, sir; yesterday morning. And your baggage?"
"I left it at the hotel."