"What the devil is the matter with you? What are you going to do? and who are you going to do it to?"
"To an insolent fellow who is in front of this house. Come, Chaudoreille; follow me. If there were ten of them, they should have the pleasure of feeling my poniard. You shall also have the pleasure of chasing and chastising these blackguards."
While saying this Touquet ran into the shop and hastened to open the door, being by that means sooner in the street than if he had gone by the passageway. While he precipitately drew the bolts, Chaudoreille rose with a good deal of fury and ran three times round the hall, crying,—
"Where the devil have I laid my sword?"
This feat accomplished, he perceived that Rolande had not left his side, and cried to Touquet, who could not hear him,—
"Stupid that I am! In my hurry I did not see him. I am with you; I have only to draw him from the scabbard.—Come then, Rolande.—It is this cursed knot which holds him. Plague be on the rosette! Touquet, here I am; amuse them a little until I can draw Rolande from the scabbard."
But the barber was already in the street, while Chaudoreille remained at the back of the room, appearing to be making futile efforts to draw his sword, crying all the while,—
"I am with you! Cursed rosette! Without it I should have already killed five or six."
CHAPTER VIII
Conversation by the Fireside
IT was really for little Blanche that somebody was singing and accompanying himself on the guitar. Lovers are the most imprudent of mortals. Urbain in loving Blanche was experiencing love for the first time, for he would have scorned to have given the name of love to those momentary caprices of the fancy which are extinguished as soon as gratified; and even at the early date at which we are writing, the young men permitted themselves to have such whims; but when they loved truly that lasted in those good old times, or so they say, much longer than it does today, at least among the little shopkeepers. The great have always had their privileges, in love as in everything else.