"Impossible, you live at Montrouge, and I have business at six o'clock at the Chaussee d'Antin. Confound it."
"I have a trifle about me," said Providence, timidly, "but it is very little."
"If I had enough to take a cab I might get to Batignolles in time."
"Here is the contents of my purse, my dear fellow, thirty one sous."
"Give it to me at once, that I may bolt," said Rodolphe, who had just heard five o'clock strike, and who hastened off to keep his appointment.
"It has been hard to get," said he, counting out his money. "A hundred sous exactly. At last I am supplied, and Laure will see that she has to do with a man who knows how to do things properly. I won't take a centime home this evening. We must rehabilitate literature, and prove that its votaries only need money to be wealthy."
Rodolphe found Mademoiselle Laure at the trysting place.
"Good," said he, "for punctuality she is a feminine chronometer."
He spent the evening with her, and bravely melted down his five francs in the crucible of prodigality. Mademoiselle Laure was charmed with his manners, and was good enough only to notice that Rodolphe had not escorted her home at the moment when he was ushering her into his own room.
"I am committing a fault," said she. "Do not make me repent of it by the ingratitude which is characteristic of your sex."