“No, no! he would do much better to marry a groceress. The drivelling idiot! he is going to marry the lovely brunette, Madame Sainte-Suzanne.”
“Thélénie! is it possible?”
“It’s a fact; he told me under the seal of secrecy; he tells everybody—under the same seal.”
“But it was your duty to impress it upon him that he is doing an insane thing, that this marriage will make him very unhappy, that all the men with any good looks in Paris have known Madame Sainte-Suzanne intimately.”
“I was careful to do nothing of the kind; he would have believed that I said it from envy, from spite; and then, d’ye see, I am not sorry to see him do this crazy thing. If Chamoureau were a good fellow, if he had shown himself in prosperity a man of heart, devoted to his friends, then I would have done my utmost to prevent him from tying himself to that lady. But as he did nothing of the kind, as he is nothing better than an ass, a selfish fool overflowing with vanity, who pretended to mourn for his wife in order to make himself interesting, why, let him roll in the muck, let him swallow with his eyes closed all the lies his lovely Thélénie tells him; let him roll there till he falls into a ditch, into which that lady will not fail to push him! it will be a good thing! There’s no harm done if fools are punished from time to time. I never pity the discomfiture of those people who are insolent in prosperity.—Now I am ready; let us go; that is to say, let us go to the Café Anglais to breakfast—just a cutlet; I shall save myself for the matelote—and then to the station.”
The two friends breakfasted together. But Edmond gave Freluchon hardly time to eat; he said to him every minute:
“Let us go; you have eaten enough; if you eat any more, you won’t do honor to the matelote.”
“I assure you that I shall; the journey, you know, and the country air; and then we shall not dine as soon as we arrive.—Garçon! a cup of chocolate.”
“Great heaven! he is going to drink chocolate too! Why, it will make you ill!”
“On the contrary, it will do me good; it’s a habit which I learned from a little Spanish dancer, who danced the yota, bolera, et cetera, at the Folies-Nouvelles, and who quivered so when she looked at her feet. Ah! my dear fellow, such a quivering!”