"You are like Gribouille, then, who jumped into the water for fear of the rain."
"It's an outrage, your proposition to me! I will request you, monsieur, not to speak to me hereafter. I do not consort with men who fight duels, not I! Don't detain me, or I shall call for help."
The little bald man almost ran away. Cherami shrugged his shoulders, saying to himself:
"Old guinea-hen! I might have guessed that the simple word duel would frighten him! He won't be my second. Sapristi! I haven't my cue!"
Cherami was almost at the end of Boulevard Beaumarchais, when he heard a voice exclaim:
"Yes, yes, it's him; there he is—the man who keeps us waiting for dinner, and never comes! God bless my soul! it takes you a long time to smoke your cigar."
At the sound of those familiar accents, Beau Arthur turned, and saw Madame Capucine, attended as always by her two brats; the elder still wearing his Henri IV hat, with the feathers falling over his eyes; the younger eating gingerbread, and finding a way to stuff his fingers into his nose at the same time.
"Ah! upon my word, it's the lovely Madame Capucine," said Cherami, joining the group.
The stout woman, glancing at her debtor's fashionable attire, smiled amiably, as she rejoined:
"I ought not to speak to you again, by good rights! That was a very pretty trick you played us at Passy: to leave us on the pretext of smoking a cigar! Oh! monsieur would only be gone a few minutes; and it was eleven months ago!"