"Ho! Monsieur, Madame is deceiving you: Madame is the person who loves me!"
I felt a cold sweat moisten my temples. I hastened my steps in my eagerness to flee, thinking no more of the woman I was dragging along on my arm. At the end of the avenue, as I was about at last to quit this accursed spot, on stepping down from the sidewalk, I ran against a man who was sitting at his ease upon the curbstone. He was leaning his head against a lamp-post, his face turned towards the sky, and was executing with the aid of his fingers a very complicated calculation.
He turned his eyes, and, without moving his head from his pillow, stammered out:
"Ah! it is you, Monsieur! You must help me to count the stars. I have already found several millions of them, but I am afraid I have forgotten one somewhere. The welfare of humanity, Monsieur, depends upon statistics alone!"
A hiccough interrupted him. He resumed, with tears in his eyes:
"Do you know what a star costs? Surely, the great God has gone to vast expense on high, and the people lack bread, Monsieur! Of what good are those lamps up there? Can they be eaten? What is the practical application of them, I beg of you? We have no need whatever of this eternal fête!"
He had succeeded in turning his body around; he gazed about him with perplexed looks, tossing his head with an indignant air. It was then that he noticed my companion. He gave a start, and, with purple visage, greedily stretched out his arms.
"Ah! ah!" he stuttered, "it is the person who loves me!"
The girl and I walked on a short distance.
"Listen," said she: "I am poor; I do what I can to get something to eat. Last winter, I spent fifteen hours a day bent over my work, an honest trade, and yet I was sometimes without bread. In the spring, I threw my needle out of the window. I had found an occupation less fatiguing and more lucrative.