"Emile! Have you seen him to-day?"
"No; I started very early to attend to his matters. If you weren't so peculiar, I would tell you about it, as you know the bulk of his story."
"I don't think he has any secrets for me. However, if he has confided something more to you than to me, I have no desire to know it."
"Never fear, I have no desire to tell it to you, either."
"And you cannot even give me any news of him? I am anxious about him. I had hoped to see him to-day; indeed I came away from home to meet him."
"Ah! in that case I understand how it happens that you, who never leave your park, have strayed so far. But you are wrong to follow the fields like that. They are all cut up with brooks that are of no mean size, and I don't know where we are. Ten million devils! How it comes down! This is just the kind of night that Emile arrived in this region. I met him under a big rock where he had gone for shelter, and I had no idea that when I crept in there I put my hand on a friend, a true manly heart, a treasure!"
"You are very much attached to him, aren't you? He has tried very often to talk to me about you."
"And you would never let him? I suspected as much. He is a man like you; no prouder in the depths of his heart and as ready to give his life as his purse for the unfortunate. But he doesn't lose his temper for nothing, and when he says a pleasant word to you, you aren't afraid that he's going to hit you with a club."
"Oh! I know that he's a much better and very much more amiable man than I am. If you see him to-night or to-morrow morning, tell me how he is. Tell him to come and see me, for I am overwhelmed by his sorrow."
"And so am I; but I have more hope than you and he. However, if I were rich like you——"