“Are you suffering?” he asked.
“Not at all.”
What, then, was the matter? But it was seldom that he asked for an explanation of a thing that astonished him, preferring to divine and to explain it himself.
“Ah! I understand it,” he said with a satisfied smile.
“The youth of my young ‘confrere’ astonishes you. It is his fault. Why the devil did he have his long hair and his light curled beard cut?”
If Madame Dammauville had not released the lampshade, she would have seen Saniel turned pale and his lips quiver.
“Mais voila!” continued Balzajette. “He made this sacrifice to his new functions; the student has disappeared before the professor.”
He might have continued along time. Neither Madame Dammauville nor Saniel listened to him; but, thinking of his dinner, he was not going to launch into a discourse that at any other moment he would not have failed to undertake. He rose to go.
As Saniel bowed, Madame Dammauville stopped him with a movement of her hand.
“Did you not know this unfortunate who was assassinated opposite?” she asked, pointing to the windows.