"Ha! ha! very pretty! that word, in your mouth, has a wide meaning—inasmuch as your mouth is not small. Is it because you are covered with bells that you put on so many airs to-night? Bless my soul! if you had asked me for nothing more than bells, I'd have given them to you. I didn't know that you were so fond of them as all this! But really, seeing how enthusiastically you dance, and especially these innumerable bells with which you are loaded down, I confess that I can hardly mourn over your terrible plight of this morning.—Come, leave your Don Quixote, who looks to me amazingly like a vender of theatre tickets, and come to supper with us. I'll give you as many kisses as you have bells; isn't that a seductive prospect?"
Meanwhile Edmond was saying to the débardeur:
"Look you, my dear Amélia, after the quadrille, leave your Roman, who looks to me too much like a claquer, and take my arm. We were not at odds this morning, why should we be now? You are wrong to espouse your friend's quarrel. Henriette will make you do all sorts of foolish things; you are too nice a girl to dance with such fellows!"
The young grisette seemed to hesitate; but every time that her friend passed her, she said earnestly:
"Don't speak to these fellows! You know what I told you; it's all over between us if you go back to Edmond. My dear girl, women must stand by each other, or else these men will make fools of us."
"Ah! the pretty bells! Mon Dieu! what a lot of bells!" cried Freluchon, still laughing as he watched Mademoiselle Henriette. "I have seen many Follies, but none that approached this one in the matter of bells! I say, Edmond, if a poodle wore as many bells as this, he'd be mistaken for a mule. Oh! how tickled I should be to have bells on all my clothes instead of buttons!"
The Folly was beside herself with rage; she whispered in her Cupid's ear. The Cupid—Don Quixote was a tall, solidly-built fellow, who had every appearance of being a formidable athlete. He walked up to Freluchon, planted himself directly in front of him, and said in a voice that seemed to issue from a cavern:
"I say, counter-jumper, ain't you about through bothering my partner? Understand that if you don't leave her in peace, her and her bells, I'll knock off your hat with the top of my boot and send it up to the gallery."
"Oho! my handsome Cupid, that's a trick I should be delighted to see," retorted Freluchon in a mocking tone. "Really, it would please me immensely if you should succeed."
"Ah! you want to see it, do you? well, look!"