"Ah! madame—I see that Albert did very wrong to send me to you."
"How so? do you repent of having conferred a favor on your friend?"
"But if that favor deprives me of my repose, my happiness, my peace of mind!"
"Ha! ha! you are joking. How is your repose endangered, pray?"
At that moment, the showman, standing directly beneath the window of the room occupied by Tobie and his charge, began to announce the performance by tapping with a stick on a huge picture placed beside the entrance of the booth. His voice was so shrill and penetrating that it was impossible for persons in the private rooms not to hear every word he said, even when they paid no attention; and the following dialogue between the young man and his fair companion was necessarily interrupted by the mountebank's periods:
TOBIE (trying to take Madame Plays's hand).
You ask me how my repose is endangered. Is it possible that you have not divined! Great God!
THE SHOWMAN.
The show is about to begin, messieurs and mesdames; it is about to begin.
MADAME PLAYS.