"Wretch! do you dare to insult my sorrow? If I should listen to my anger—"
"O mercy! do not listen to it, I beg of you. Ugh, I can't bear it any longer. What the devil sort of man are you? Did you come from the Château de Vincennes? Because I offer to help you look for your lost purse, you try to strangle me!"
"My purse? what, you were talking about money?"
"How could I talk about anything else after having had so much of it as I have."
"Excuse me, monsieur, I didn't understand you."
"I'm beginning to see that; but, by jingo, we were nearly choked, that is to say, you choked me. What a grip you have, it's like mine when I hold Rolande. It appears that it's not money you've lost, then?"
"O monsieur, would to heaven it were! I would give all I possess to recover her whom I adore—she who was about to become my wife!"
"Poor simpleton," said Chaudoreille to himself, "it's on account of a woman that he's lamenting thus. He doesn't know what it is to lose two hundred pistoles, without counting the small change. But since he's not been robbed, I'll try to make him useful—if I could replenish my pockets by helping him to find his lass!"
The chevalier rose, and seating himself on a stone near Urbain, said to him, in a feeling voice,—
"Tell me your troubles, young man, I'm the protector of everything in nature that suffers—in consideration of a slight gratuity; but I never charge anything, trusting to the generosity of those whom I oblige."