“If they should receive me coldly—with that frigid courtesy that means: ‘Monsieur, you are welcome this once—it’s all right—but you will gratify us by not coming again’——”
“Why, you would say to them: ‘Mesdames, you will be the losers; I improve rapidly on acquaintance’——”
“Ah! there’s the bell, the signal for the train; let’s hurry.”
“Hurry! what an extraordinary man! What’s the use of hurrying? there’s always room in the cars; as the saying goes: ‘When there’s no more room, there is still some.’ ”
The two friends took their seats, and the train started. Freluchon scrutinized their travelling companions. Two elderly women, a child, and three men, two of whom instantly began to smoke, in the teeth of the regulations, deeming it perfectly natural to gratify a brutish taste at the risk of setting the carriage on fire and roasting a considerable number of travellers. What vile cads such people are!
Freluchon admired the landscape, as much as one can admire it from a railway train. The country was very pretty through Raincy; but Edmond looked at nothing, saw nothing. Whenever the train stopped, he wanted to alight, thinking that they had arrived; Freluchon was obliged to hold him back by the coat, saying:
“We are not at Chelles; do you mean to go the rest of the way on foot?”
At last they reached the Chelles station. The two friends alighted and Edmond asked a peasant woman:
“Which way to Chelles, if you please?”
“To your left, up the hill.”