Maxime returned the civility of his rival, and touched his hat lightly with an air of laughable gravity.
“That’s one way of looking at life,” he replied in the tone of one connoisseur to another. “You owe—?”
“Oh! a mere trifle, unworthy of being confessed to an uncle; he would disinherit me for such a paltry sum,—six thousand.”
“One is often more hampered by six thousand than by a hundred thousand,” said Maxime, sententiously. “La Palferine, you’ve a bold spirit, and you have even more spirit than boldness; you can go far, and make yourself a position. Let me tell you that of all those who have rushed into the career at the close of which I now am, and who have tried to oppose me, you are the only one who has ever pleased me.”
La Palferine colored, so flattered was he by this avowal made with gracious good-humor by the leader of Parisian adventurers. This action of his own vanity was however a recognition of inferiority which wounded him; but Maxime divined that unpleasant reaction, easy to foresee in so clever a mind, and he applied a balm instantly by putting himself at the discretion of the young man.
“Will you do something for me that will facilitate my retreat from the Olympic circus by a fine marriage? I will do as much for you.”
“You make me very proud; it realizes the fable of the Rat and the Lion,” said La Palferine.
“I shall begin by lending you twenty thousand francs,” continued Maxime.
“Twenty thousand francs! I knew very well that by dint of walking up and down this boulevard—” said La Palferine, in the style of a parenthesis.
“My dear fellow, you must put yourself on a certain footing,” said Maxime, laughing. “Don’t go on your own two feet, have six; do as I do, I never get out of my tilbury.”