“Ah, Désiré! ah, Désiré!” gasped Gaillard, like a man trying to speak in a shower bath. “Can it be that at last you are going to return to us? Can——”
“Call me Toto,” cried the Prince. “I hate that vile name Désiré. I put it on with this foolishness—this rotten art business. Don’t mind me, my dear fellow; let me rave. I have had no one to talk to for days but Garnier and Célestin. They do not understand me.”
“Go on, go on,” said Gaillard, as if Toto had swallowed poison and he was urging him to vomit. “Speak away, it will do you good; relieve your mind—it will save you perhaps from madness. Ah, I can understand—I can understand what you must have suffered, my poor Toto! I have been through it all myself.”
“Come in here,” said Toto, stopping at a small café; “we can sit down and talk.”
“Yes, let us enter,” said Gaillard. “No, do not touch absinthe in a place like this; if you wish to die, choose an easier poison. Beer? Yes, let us have some beer. And now, Toto, continue your troubles.”
“I have only one trouble,” said Toto, “and that is Célestin.”
“Ah, mon Dieu! that is a trouble easily got rid of.”
“How?”
“Leave Célestin to me.”
“What would you do with her?”