"So you gambled last night, you wretch, did you? and that is where our funds have gone?"
"Ah! my friend, beat me, kill me! I know that I am a good-for-naught. But, really, you would have done the same in my place. When a person assumes a respectable name—— For my part, I went there in all confidence, hoping to make an advantageous match. I heard people all about me talking of nothing but 'my estates, my châteaux, my servants, my millions'—as I would say 'my cane' or 'my hat.' And then, they dazed me with attentions and liqueurs. Still, I ought to have noticed that there was a suspicious look to it all; but what can you expect? Unluckily, I am not accustomed to good society. I took the pressure of one woman's foot for patrician manners, and another woman's blunders in grammar for a German accent. We played cards,—I confess that I love cards,—and they stripped me of everything, even to my hat! But they haven't seen the end of it!"
"Where are you going?" said Frédéric, trying to detain his friend, who had taken his shocking old hat as if to go out.
"Let me go, let me go! I am going to hunt up my blacklegs, and perhaps—— Wait here for me."
Dubourg opened the door just as Ménard returned with an apothecary's clerk, who had a sedative potion in each hand.
Dubourg roughly pushed the tutor aside when he tried to stop him, and descended the stairs four at a time, while the tutor collided with the apothecary, who fell to the floor with his potions.
"We must send somebody after him," said Ménard, thinking that Dubourg was in a high fever. Frédéric had some difficulty in inducing him to dismiss the apothecary, by assuring him that the baron was very much better.
Dubourg betook himself to the residence of his false marchioness, whose address he had retained. He was obliged to go on foot, and he no longer assumed the air of a great noble. The eyeglass would have accorded but ill with the wretched tile, which was not half large enough for him. But at that time he was thinking exclusively of his money, not at all of his costume. When he reached the house he had visited the night before, which he readily recognized from having scrutinized it carefully in the night, he entered the hall, the door of which was open, went upstairs, and looked and listened, but neither saw anybody nor heard a sound. He rang at the door of the apartment from which he had been ejected so roughly, but no one answered the bell. He rang again and again, with increasing violence, until the bell-pull came off in his hand, but the door remained closed.
"Open, you rascals, you blacklegs! or I'll go for a magistrate," cried Dubourg, putting his mouth to the keyhole. Finally an old woman appeared on the landing above and asked him why he was making such an uproar.
"I want to speak with the people who live here on the first floor," he replied.