"Ah! here you are, you rakes!" cried Balivan; "have you been passing a night at the card table? What scandalous conduct! you are to blame for my not being able to do a stroke of work yesterday."
"But you are working hard to-day, Balivan. Upon my word, you are eating a fine cigar with your chocolate, instead of a roll!"
"Mon Dieu! so I am. Why do they make cigars of this shape? I took it for a gaufre,[I] and I adore gaufres in chocolate."
"We came to ask you about young Tobie, messieurs.—Have you seen him since night before last, Monsieur Varinet?"
"Who in the devil is Monsieur Tobie?" queried the white-eyebrowed young man, in amazement.
"The individual of the fetich—the olive."
"Oh, yes! the man who put up an olive at five hundred francs."
"The same. Has he been to you to pay his debt and redeem his pledge?"
"No; and to prove it, I'll show you that I still have it in my purse."
Monsieur Varinet drew his purse and showed them the olive among some gold pieces; it had dried and had shrunk considerably.