"Yes, yes. Oh! never fear; I'll not leave you. Is your unfaithful one there?"
"Fanny! She has married another—and I loved her so dearly!"
"Poor boy! I understand your suffering, now."
"Oh! I would like to die before her eyes."
"No nonsense! As if any man ought to die for a woman! Pshaw! there's nothing so easy to replace!"
The first carriage of this second wedding party had stopped at the door; four young men alighted, fashionably dressed all, and of genteel bearing. One of the four was evidently the hero of the ceremony; it was he who gave the orders, sent his groomsmen to the other carriages, or told them to whom they were to offer their arms. He was a little older than the others, apparently about thirty, and his life had evidently been well occupied, for his strongly marked, but jaded, features denoted excess of toil or of dissipation. He was a good-looking fellow, tall and slender, with an air of distinction; but there were dark rings around his great, brown eyes, his lips were thin and compressed, his smile was rather satirical than amiable, his forehead was already furrowed by numerous wrinkles, and he frowned repeatedly when he spoke with the slightest animation; his hair, which was of a glossy black and trimmed close, was already decidedly thin in front, and scarcely plentiful enough elsewhere to protect the top of his head.
"That's he! that's Auguste Monléard!" the young man to whom Cherami had attached himself murmured, with a shudder; and, as he spoke, he gripped his companion's arm in a sort of frenzy. But Cherami, far from complaining of that liberty, passed his arm through his new acquaintance's, saying:
"Ah! that young man is Auguste Monléard, is he? Wait! wait! Monléard; I knew a Monléard, twenty years ago, but this can't be the same man. Is he the groom?"
"Yes; it is for him that she has forgotten me, thrown me aside."
"She is wrong. That young man is good-looking, but you are younger; and then, too, that fellow looks to me as if he had had a devilishly intimate acquaintance with the joys of life!—I don't impute it to him as a crime—but he'll soon have to wear a wig."