“My dear and lovely Madame de Belleville, is it true that your husband has discovered the secret of divining a woman’s age and telling it at once, simply by examining her corsets?”
“Oh! madame, who can have told you such a thing?” said Thélénie, laughing heartily; “and how could you believe it? Who has been telling you this fairy tale?”
“Monsieur Jarnouillard told it to us as a positive fact; Monsieur de Belleville is to make his experiments during dinner.”
“Ha! ha! what an excellent joke!”
“Jarnouillard!—Come here a moment. From whom did you get this story concerning Monsieur de Belleville’s secret relative to women’s ages?”
The lank, yellow, ugly miser looked around and pointed to Freluchon, crying:
“From that young man from Paris over there.”
“Oh! then I am not surprised,” said Thélénie; “that is Monsieur Freluchon; his one delight is to laugh and make jokes.”
“I call it very ridiculous!” said Madame Droguet.
Thélénie went up to the diminutive young man and bestowed a gracious smile on him.