XVI
MONSIEUR POTERNE CONTINUES HIS LITTLE TRICKS
At the Café de Paris, Chérubin found Daréna and two young dandies whose acquaintance he had made in the foyer of the Opéra. Intimacies are quickly formed at eighteen years; we proffer and give our friendship as if it were the most commonplace thing in the world. As we grow older, we often discover that we gave nothing and received nothing.
Chérubin’s two new friends were only a few years older than he. One of them, whose name was Benoît Mousseraud, called himself de Mousseraud, and never mentioned his Christian name, which he considered vulgar. The other, on the contrary, whose name was Oscar Chiponard, used his Christian name only, and never mentioned his family name.
The former was a tall, slender young man of twenty-two, not ill-looking, although his eyes lacked expression and his hair, which he declared to be blond, bordered closely on the red; he was a brainless chatterbox, who boasted of making a conquest of every woman he saw, and of being the best dressed man in Paris.
The other was twenty-four years of age; he was small, dark, yellow-skinned, and would have been decidedly ugly, except that his black eyes were so full of fire and animation that they imparted much expression to his countenance. He might have passed for a clever fellow, if he had not had the folly to blush for his family and to lose his temper whenever anyone mentioned the name of his father.
Both these gentlemen belonged to wealthy families. Mousseraud was the son of a provincial notary and proposed to purchase a brokerage business in Paris; Chiponard, whose father was a retired watchmaker, proposed to do nothing at all.
They both displayed great friendliness to Daréna because he was of noble birth, and he reciprocated because they were rich. In society there is an almost constant interchange of these selfish sentiments.
“Come, come, Marquis Chérubin,” said Daréna, “we are waiting for you; the breakfast is all ordered, and it will be rather fine; I understand such matters.”
“You’re a little late,” said Oscar.
“He has probably been to bid one of his mistresses good-morning,” added the tall Mousseraud, stroking his chin.