“You remember, my dear Céleste, you complained of Captain de Meneval the last time he was here. You said he talked and laughed so much, and chucked Élise under the chin——”
“But that was a trifle; you know there’s no real harm done,” protested Mademoiselle Bouchard.
“Why? Because I won’t let him,” said Monsieur Bouchard, with the determined air a man assumes when he wishes to impress a woman with a great notion of the power he holds over another man. “It is because he has to deal with me—a man born with his shirt on, as the peasants say. Otherwise, there might be harm done. De Meneval is very saucy. When I reminded him the other day of the promise I exacted from him when he married Léontine, that he wouldn’t go into debt, the fellow grinned and said he was in love with Léontine, and would have promised to eat his grandmother if I had made that a condition.”
“But in reference to this strange notion of yours about taking an apartment at your time of life——”
“That’s just it, my dear,” cried Monsieur Bouchard. “I am too old not to have a separate establishment.”
“Too old!” cried Mademoiselle, who had never ceased to regard the model Monsieur Bouchard as a wild sprig of flamboyant youth; “you mean too young!”
Monsieur Bouchard was tickled. What gentleman of fifty-four is not pleased at the assumption that he is merely a colt, after all?
Mademoiselle Bouchard anxiously scrutinized her brother. There was a lawless gleam in his eye—an indefinable something that is revealed when a man has the bit between his teeth and does not mean to let it go. Mademoiselle, good, innocent soul, was not devoid of sense, and she saw her only game was to play for time.
“Very well, Paul. If you will desert the Rue Clarisse, I will look about and get you an apartment near by, and I will let you have Pierre——”
“Oh, no, no!” cried Monsieur Bouchard, hastily. He had no mind to have a domestic Vidocq in his new quarters. “I couldn’t think of robbing you of Pierre. Thirty years you have had him. You could not get on without him.”