"Brothers!" cried Petitpas, in ecstasy. "You shall hear all about a novel that I have projected for years. I should like to have your opinion of it."
"I shall be enchanted," said Tricotrin, his jaw dropping.
"You must introduce me to your circle—the painters, and the models, and the actresses. Your friends shall be my friends in future."
"Don't doubt it! When I tell them what a brick you are, they will be proud to know you."
"No ceremony, mind!"
"Not a bit. You shall be another chum. Already I feel as if we had been confidants in our cradles."
"It is the same with me. How true it is that kindred spirits recognise each other in an instant. What is environment? Bah! A man may be a bohemian and an artist although his occupations are commercial?"
"Perfectly! I nearly pined amid commercial occupations myself."
"What an extraordinary coincidence! Ah, that is the last bond between us! You can realise my most complex moods, you can penetrate to the most distant suburbs of my soul! Gustave, if I had been free to choose my career, I should have become a famous man." "My poor Adolphe! Still, prosperity is not an unmixed evil. You must seek compensation in your wealth," murmured the poet, who began to think that one might pay too high a price for a bed.
"Oh—er—to be sure!" said the little clerk, reminded that he was pledged to a larger outlay than he had originally proposed. "That is to say, I am not precisely 'wealthy.'" He saw his pocket-money during the trip much curtailed, and rather wished that his impulse had been less expansive.