Albert's friends continue to stroll on the boulevards, cigar in mouth. Mouillot is still a high liver, Balivan as distraught as ever, and Dupétrain still insists on putting people to sleep. Monsieur Varinet no longer lends five hundred francs on an olive, because he is afraid of having to keep it too long in his purse, and Monsieur Célestin de Valnoir, having obtained his release from Sainte-Pélagie, bends his energies to piling up other debts.
Madame Plays continues to disregard her husband's rights; but she cannot endure the sight of Tobie; she holds him in horror, because she believes that he killed Albert. Young Pigeonnier consoles himself for the rigor of the superb Herminie with Aunt Abraham's fortune and his reputation for valor.
On the day before his departure for Auvergne with his sister and Bastringuette, Sans-Cravate saw two men in the street, handcuffed together, on their way to the Préfecture, escorted by gendarmes. He recognized Laboussole and Jean Ficelle. The latter seemed a little abashed to be seen with such an escort; but Monsieur Laboussole kept up a continual outcry of:
"It's a mistake of the gendarmes; they take us for somebody else! That trick's been played on me seven or eight times before!"
"That's how I should have ended, perhaps," thought Sans-Cravate, as he looked after them, "if I'd listened to that ne'er-do-well's advice! for there's no mistake about it, when a man keeps going on sprees, and never works, he seldom comes to a good end."