“Madame, something very strange is going on. Alas! it is not the fact of the young lady that alarms me, but, madame, he desired me not to mention her existence to you. Young men will be young men, but why this excessive secrecy? I have an intimate knowledge of the world, and I fear——I do not like this M. Gaillard, either; he indulges most intemperately.”
“Oh, Gaillard the poet,” said the Princesse; “there is not much harm in him.”
Still, she felt uneasy, and determined in her own mind to have an interview with Gaillard, and implore him to protect her precious Toto from the machinations of strange girls, and lead him into the right path—the path that led to Helen Powers.
“Why did you give that old fool a rendezvous at the Café de la Paix?” asked the Prince as the train whirled them along past green fields, on which Célestin’s eyes were fixed with pathetic rapture.
“I did not give him a rendezvous,” replied the poet, who had obtained Célestin’s assent to his smoking one of Toto’s cigarettes. “I shall not be there. Wolf will be there, and they will bore each other. Wolf is a dun, M. de Nani is a bore. I always appoint my duns and bores to meet each other at the Café de la Paix, the Café Américain, or the Grand Café. They dine together and speak ill of me whilst I am dining at Foyot’s, or the Café Anglais, or the Maison Dorée. I have made the fortune of three cafés by the people I have sent there to wait for me. They all ask for each other, and sit at the same table and wait for me; then they dine, and as a rule drink too much champagne to assuage themselves——”
“Mon Dieu, Célestin!” cried Toto, seizing both her hands; “what is this? You are crying!”
“I have just remembered Dodor,” sobbed Célestin. “I have left him shut up in my room, and, oh! should anyone open the door and leave it so, Mme. Liard’s cat may kill him. What shall I do?”
“Why, the girl has a baby!” thought Gaillard in astonishment.
“Well, this is a nuisance!” said Toto in a voice of tribulation.
“How old is Dodor, mademoiselle?” asked the poet.