"Perhaps, monsieur; that depends on the possible results of the pleasure which you wish to afford your friend. What is this joyous news which you are in such haste to transmit to my nephew, so as to make him hurry back? Couldn't you tell me?"
"I might say that you are very inquisitive; but you are my friend's uncle, and, for that reason, I excuse you. The little woman whom Gustave adored, whom he still adores—at least, he told me so before he went away—that charming Fanny!—and she really is very pretty! I had a chance to examine her at my ease when I called on her—a refined, intellectual face, a coaxing voice, a foot just large enough to say that she has one——"
"Well, monsieur, this Fanny?"
"Well, dear uncle, she is a widow!"
"Oh! monsieur, I have known that a long while. She's a widow because her husband blew his brains out, which doesn't indicate that he was very happy at home."
"I beg your pardon; he killed himself because he was ruined—by unlucky speculations on the Bourse. Still, I am not talking about the dead man, but about his widow. Since the woman Gustave adored is free, what is there to prevent him, later—I don't say now, at once, but when her year of mourning has passed——"
"So, monsieur, it is with the purpose of reviving that idiotic passion of my nephew for a woman who laughed at him, that you insist upon knowing where he is? You hope that on receipt of your letter he will drop everything and return to Paris?"
"I am even capable of going where he is, myself, to fetch him home, if it isn't too far—and doesn't cost too much! I will travel third class; I don't mind. One must make some sacrifice to friendship."
"You will not have that trouble, monsieur; and as I consider that my nephew will certainly return soon enough, so far as seeing your Fanny is concerned, and as I flatter myself that he will then have ceased to think of that young woman, I shall not give you his address."
"Ah! indeed! so you are still as hard-hearted and tyrannical as ever?"