“I will go with you, if it will give you pleasure,” said Schinkel, very obligingly, to Hyacinth.
“Then you will give me that letter first!” Madame Poupin, erecting herself, declared to the German.
“My wife, you are an imbecile!” Poupin groaned, lifting his hands and shoulders and turning away.
“I may be an imbecile, but I won’t be a party—no, God help me, not to that!” protested the Frenchwoman, planted before Schinkel as if to prevent his moving.
“If you have a letter for me, you ought to give it to me,” said Hyacinth to Schinkel. “You have no right to give it to any one else.”
“I will bring it to you in your house, my good friend,” Schinkel replied, with a little wink that seemed to say that Madame Poupin would have to be considered.
“Oh, in his house—I’ll go to his house!” cried the lady. “I regard you, I have always regarded you, as my child,” she declared to Hyacinth, “and if this isn’t an occasion for a mother!”
“It’s you that are making it an occasion. I don’t know what you are talking about,” said Hyacinth. He had been questioning Schinkel’s eye, and he thought he saw there a little twinkle of assurance that he might really depend upon him. “I have disturbed you, and I think I had better go away.”
Poupin had turned round again; he seized the young man’s arm eagerly, as if to prevent his retiring before he had given a certain satisfaction. “How can you care, when you know everything is changed?”
“What do you mean—everything is changed?”