"If you dared what?"
"To ask you—"
"Well, why don't you speak?"
"Some news of Mademoiselle Blanche."
"Mademoiselle Blanche! Oh that's what you are up to, my young dandy? Go along, go your own way; you're addressing the wrong person. If you want to talk about that dear child, speak to my master; he'll answer you, I warrant, and in the best manner."
So saying, Marguerite left Urbain and went in, murmuring,—
"Monsieur is right, it is necessary to redouble our watchfulness that such a pretty girl may not be besieged by these worthless fellows."
"They're all bound to make me despair," said Urbain, disheartened by the unkind welcome accorded him by the old woman, "but, despite all their precautions, I shall see her, I shall speak to her." And the better to dream of at least seeing her Urbain departed from the house that held Blanche; he walked by chance and soon arrived on the Pont-Neuf.
The Pont-Neuf was then a meeting place for strangers, for schemers, for idlers, for pickpockets, and people who had newly disembarked. It was the most crowded thoroughfare of the capital; unceasingly encumbered with groups of curious people who stopped before the quacks, who were selling their universal panaceas and playing farces, mountebanks, thimbleriggers, pedlers of songs, of ironmongery, of books, of jujubes, it offered to the observer a diverting and extremely animated scene.
Tabarin, who became famous by the scenes which he played in public, and from whom our great Molière has not disdained to borrow some buffooneries, was then established on the Pont-Neuf, towards the Place Dauphine. He had succeeded the famous Signor Hieronimo who, in the Cour du Palais, sold an ointment to cure burns, after burning himself publicly on the hands and curing the wounds with his balm, while Galinette-la-Galine attracted the passers by his parades.