He returned to his stand, lost in thought, with no desire to laugh or dance, and saying to himself:
"Was it because he learned that Liline had found her brother that Monsieur Albert carried her off so quick?"
XXVII
LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP
When Paul lay on the ground, unconscious, after he had been wounded on the head and arm by his fall, Bastringuette had hastened to the spot; and seeing Sans-Cravate walk rapidly away, she had partly divined the cause of the younger man's deplorable condition.
"Mon Dieu! mon Dieu!" cried the girl; "they have been fighting—or, rather, Sans-Cravate insisted on fighting this poor boy, who ain't strong enough to stand up to him. And it must have been jealousy that made Sans-Cravate do it—because he saw me talking to Paul. I'm the cause of his hard luck—or my beastly coquetry, my foolish idea of changing lovers, when I was well off. But that's how it always is in love; when you're well off, it bores you, and you want to change; when you're badly off, you stay as you are."
While she talked thus to herself, Bastringuette did what she could for the young messenger. The people who had collected talked about carrying him to the nearest hospital, but Bastringuette cried out at the word:
"I guess not much! You don't catch me letting this poor boy go to the hospital while I have a decent place to take him to! He must have rooms somewhere himself; but as he can't talk just now, he can't tell us where they are. Anyway, it will be more convenient for me to nurse him and make herb tea for him in my room; for these boys never have a kettle fit to boil water in."
So the flower girl sent for a cab; they lifted the wounded man into it, after she had bandaged his head and arm as well as she could; then she gave her address—Rue des Martyrs, near the barrier—and when they arrived there, Paul was taken up to her room, with the assistance of the cabman and the concierge, and placed on her bed.
As may be imagined, Bastringuette's domicile was not luxurious. Her apartment consisted of a bedroom and closet, on the fifth floor, under the eaves. She called it the sparrows' entresol.
The furniture was very modest: a wooden cot-bed, a cherry commode, six cane-seated chairs,—or rather six chairs that needed to be reseated,—a small table, a mirror, a foot-warmer, and a stove. So much for the bedroom. As to the closet, it contained a row of pegs, on which nothing was ever hung. But the aspect of the bedroom was not unpleasant and did not indicate downright poverty, thanks to the spotless cleanliness that prevailed.