"If you keep the thing much longer," said Balivan, "you'll have nothing left but the stone."
"Do you know Tobie's address, messieurs?" asked Albert.
"No," replied the painter; "if I knew it, I should have gone there before this to remind him of his fetich, which he has not redeemed. As it was at my rooms that he contracted that debt to Monsieur Varinet, whom he had never seen but once before, I consider it infernally ill-bred in him not to have paid up at once."
"Oh! I am not at all alarmed," said Varinet, calmly.
"But I must see this little Tobie," said Albert; "and I will not fail to remind him of his debt; for it would be exceedingly unpleasant for us to have Monsieur Varinet fall a victim to his confidence in a person whom he had reason to look upon as a friend of ours."
"What's all this? what friends are you talking about?" said the jovial Mouillot, as he joined the four young men and shook hands with them. "I have just seen Dupétrain talking with a lady on Rue de Richelieu, messieurs; he had her backed up against a porte cochère, and, in my opinion, he was trying to magnetize her on the carriage stone."
"Ah! it's Mouillot!"
"How much did you win at bouillotte the night before last, Mouillot?"
"Six hundred and twenty francs; that's all."
"What a lucky dog he is! he always wins."