"For my part, I think," said Pellerin, "he might have had the grace to give me an order for a picture."
Deslauriers held his tongue, as he had the bank-notes that had been given to him in his breeches' pocket.
Frederick was left by himself. He was thinking about his friends, and it seemed to him as if a huge ditch surrounded with shade separated him from them. He had nevertheless held out his hand to them, and they had not responded to the sincerity of his heart.
He recalled to mind what Pellerin and Dussardier had said about Arnoux. Undoubtedly it must be an invention, a calumny? But why? And he had a vision of Madame Arnoux, ruined, weeping, selling her furniture. This idea tormented him all night long. Next day he presented himself at her house.
At a loss to find any way of communicating to her what he had heard, he asked her, as if in casual conversation, whether Arnoux still held possession of his building grounds at Belleville.
"Yes, he has them still."
"He is now, I believe, a shareholder in a kaolin company in Brittany."
"That's true."
"His earthenware-works are going on very well, are they not?"
"Well—I suppose so——"