"But I have always worked, monsieur; it's a habit with me, a necessity. I didn't have to make a study of it—a study which is often repellent when one begins it late in life."
"Have you any place to offer me, monsieur?"
"Well, then, why do you ask me all these questions? I do not imagine that it is your purpose to make sport of me."
"Is it yours to pick a quarrel with me?"
"No, no! sapristi! I am not picking a quarrel with you—Gustave's uncle, and he my best friend! Oh! if you weren't his uncle, I don't say that—but you are his uncle.—Let us come to the point; I came to ask you where your nephew is at this moment."
"My nephew is travelling: he is in one place to-day, in another to-morrow."
"Oh! I see that we are going to have the same old song over again! You will not give me his address?—But if I want to write to him, to tell him something which will give him great pleasure, which will make him happy?"
"Tell me, and I'll write it to him."
"That isn't the same thing. But, no matter, I will tell you. You know, I suppose, that his passion, whom he thought he was surely going to marry this time, has thrown him over again, in favor of a very rich old count?"