“What made Melmenotte turn up his nose at it the way he did this morning when he came round?”
“He never praises anyone—he’s a fossil. Come, let us be off to the Tobacco-Pot. Annette will be here in a moment to clear up.”
“Come home with me and have some déjeuner; that will be better than the Tobacco Pot,” said Toto, as they went down the stairs.
“To your father’s place?”
“Oh, no; my atelier—Rue de Perpignan. I will introduce you to my—wife.”
“You married!” cried Garnier, stopping in astonishment, and clutching Toto’s arm. “Why, you are scarcely out of the egg!”
“I am twenty-two.”
“Mon Dieu! well, why not? it is the happiest life. Oh, I should like to have a wife and twelve little children all three years old. That is the age of all others; they talk like birds, and sentences from heaven slip into their conversation; and tumble on their noses, and pull one’s beard. I have always seen myself as I ought to be some day, with a big stomach, sitting in an armchair, the children pulling my watch-chain, and mamma plying her needle, whilst the cat purred on the hearth: and here are you, three years younger than I am, and you have it all. What an eye the Germans have for children! how they draw them! Mon Dieu! I can almost forgive them Sédan for the sake of those adorable little Fritzes and Gretchens one sees in their funny little books.”
They reached the Rue de Perpignan at last, and found déjeuner waiting. There was a little salad, some stewed beef, and a bottle of white wine, also some fruit on a plate.
As Toto and Célestin embraced, Garnier looked around him with a sigh. His room was an attic, yet I doubt if he would have exchanged his attic, where he lay abed on Sunday reading the “Mysteries of Paris” and imagining himself Prince Rudolph, and of a week-day night reading the Intransigèant by the light of a tallow candle and imagining himself Henri Rochefort, for this atelier, even were Célestin thrown in—at least, at present.