"The devil! you judge him rather harshly, Philémon!"
"I am simply telling the truth. However, I've seen very little of him for five years; he may have mended his ways."
"No," said Adhémar; "Dodichet is just the same; I have happened to meet him several times, and I have been sorry to see that our old friend has not grown any more sensible. He was in a position to succeed, for he's not a fool, and he inherited some money from his parents; but he thinks of nothing but enjoying life, of making bonnes blagues, as he expresses it; and they don't always succeed; some of them have cost him dear. I believe that he is almost ruined now; and, unfortunately, he hasn't yet decided upon any profession."
"Poor Dodichet!" said Lucien; "he must be very unhappy, then."
"He, unhappy! oh! he'll never be that. He laughs at everything, everything is couleur de rose with him; and he is convinced that he will have a fine house, horses and carriages, and a hundred thousand francs a year, some day. He has a very happy disposition."
"Why, here he is, on my word!" cried Philémon; "yes, it's really he—he has remembered our appointment. Well, he has a better memory than I supposed."
Another person had, in fact, entered the café. It was a man of twenty-six or twenty-seven years, of medium height, well set up, with dark brown hair, a slightly flushed face, sharp eyes, turned-up nose, and a huge mouth—everything, in short, which denotes a jovial companion. His costume was a little eccentric: his trousers were unconscionably full in the legs and very tight at the hips; his waistcoat was of Scotch plaid with enormous squares, and his coat was so short that it barely covered half of his posterior. On his head was a gray hat of an indescribable shape, but remotely resembling a snail's shell. Lastly, he carried in his hand a light cane with an ivory head, which head he was forever stuffing into his mouth or his nose, and at times he scratched his ear with it. Such was Monsieur Fanfan Dodichet, who, on entering the café, swung his cane in such a way as to strike a newspaper out of the hands of an old habitué of the place, who was reading it as he sipped his glass of beer.
The old gentleman looked up and cast an angry glance at the person who had torn his newspaper into strips; and Dodichet, instead of apologizing for his awkwardness, laughed in his face, and remarked:
"They'll bring you the Tintamarre; it's much more entertaining. I am sure that you were bored by what you were reading; I saw that when I came in, and I said to myself: 'There's a man who longs to change his paper; I'll give him an opportunity.'"
Without waiting for a reply, Dodichet examined all the occupied tables; and discovering at last the persons he sought, shouted, as if he were in his own house: