"Ah! what chic! There's only one thing that annoys me now; and that will spoil my enjoyment at dinner."
"What's that?"
"If monsieur le docteur might smell less strong of rose! I should prefer I don't know what to that smell. Try going out in the street and walking in—no matter what!"
"There is a way of satisfying you, Mademoiselle Rosette," I said, walking up to Balloquet.—"Come, Balloquet, we are all friends here; don't be stiff about it, but allow me to offer you another pair of gloves, and take off those you are wearing. I venture to prefer this petition in the name of these ladies' nerves, and in the name of our appetites, which would vanish before this odor of rose."
Balloquet had a noble impulse: he took his gloves off and threw them out of the window. Rosette laughed till she cried.
"Ah! it was the gloves," she cried, "cleansed gloves, of course, of course! But your dealer cheated you; they clean them now so that they don't smell of anything."
Pomponne announced that the cab was waiting. While Mademoiselle Rosette stood before my mirror, busily engaged in putting on her bonnet, I went to Frédérique, and found an opportunity to say in her ear:
"You are not joking—you are really willing to dine with a grisette?"
"Why not? you are going to, yourself."
"But I am a man."