The voice was vigorous, but showed sudden anger, a strident tone, a slight foreign accent, Spanish, perhaps.
The drunken man probably thought him insolent for, still hiccoughing, he answered:
"Oh, you want it, do you? You want it? I want it! The king says 'we wish!' don't you know?"
With another movement, he lost his equilibrium and half fell, his head hanging over, and he clutched the man he held in a sudden embrace.
"It is mine also—the street—you know!"
With sudden violence, the man disembarrassed himself of this caressing creature; he thrust aside his clinging arms with a movement so quick and strong that the intoxicated man, this time, fell, his hat rolled into the gutter, and he lay on the sidewalk.
But immediately, with a bound, he was on his feet, and as the man went calmly on his way, he followed him, seized his coat and clutched him so tightly that he could not proceed.
"Pardon;" he said, "you cannot go away like that!"
Then, as the light from a gas lamp fell on the little man's face, the young man recognized his neighbor of the cabaret, who had said to him:
"See, that is how Rovère must look!"