“I believe you’re right, Bérénice; I’ll rub a sponge over it next Sunday.”
“You’re very good, mesdames,” said a cook, stuffing into her basket the fowl she had just bought, which, from its odor, might have been taken for game, “you’re very good, but my master’s waiting for his chocolate; he wants to go out early and I ain’t lighted my fire yet.—Quick, madame, my regular number; here’s thirty-six sous—please hurry up.”
The cook took her ticket and returned to her master, making figures on the way: the fowl had cost her fifty sous; by calling it eighty-six sous, she would get her ticket for nothing, which was very pleasant. To be sure, her master would eat a tainted fowl instead of a delicate bird; but one must have one’s little perquisites, and what was the use of being a cordon bleu if one did not make something out of the marketing?
“The considérés are very old combinations,” said a little man who had been gazing at the list for three-quarters of an hour; “they’re excellent to play by extracts.”
“See,” said another, “notice that the 6 is a prisoner; it will soon come out.”
“The 2 has come, that brings the 20.”
“The 39 in a hundred and three drawings—it’s an ingot of gold! Zeros haven’t done anything for a long while.”
“That’s true; I’ll bet that they’ll come in a terne or an ambe.”
“How often the forties come out! If I’d followed my first idea, I’d have had an ambe at Strasbourg; I must tell you that, when my wife dreams that she’s had a child, the 44 comes out—that never fails. Well! she dreamed that the other night. I’ve got a dog that I’ve taught to draw numbers out of a bag; he’s beginning to do it very well with his paw. He drew out 46, and I was going to put it with my wife’s dream; we thought about it all day, and she wanted to put instead of it the number of her birthday which was very near; and what do you suppose?—my dog’s number came out with her dream!—I wouldn’t sell that beast for three hundred francs.”