“Oh! as for that, I can’t promise.”
“If you call me that at our party to-morrow, it will be infinitely disagreeable to me.”
“Why did you invite me then?”
“It wasn’t I who invited you, it was my wife.”
“Ah! thanks! I recognize you there. Well, my amiable friend, as you were not the one who invited me, I am perfectly justified in telling you that I am going to your fête to-morrow solely from curiosity, to laugh a little; because I am persuaded that there will be some amusing sights there—not counting you—and lastly because I am curious to see how you receive your old friends now that you are rich and noble and have a palace!—There! are you content with me? Ha! ha! you must tell your wife not to invite me another time.”
Chamoureau bit his lips.
“We will receive our old friends very cordially,” he muttered, “when they don’t make fun of us.—Look you, a few days ago, a German baron arrived here, a former friend of my wife; and a man of the highest extraction, and he paid me the most flattering compliments on my marriage.”
“The deuce! he must have a fine German accent, must this baron!”
“Why, no, not very much; he swears in German, that’s all. Well, since he has been here, he dines and breakfasts with us almost every day; he dined with us to-day again, and we drank a certain pomard—ah! such pomard!—he drinks straight, does the baron—and I held my own with him.”
“Ah! I am not surprised that you didn’t see where you were going just now.”