“‘A great man’s friendship is a boon of the gods;’ but an agreeable woman’s love is the greatest blessing on earth! Come; you don’t play, nor I; it is time to go.”
They left the salon, which the Noirmont family had quitted just before.
XIX
THE COMTESSE DE GLOBESKA
It was nine o’clock at night, and two men, who seemed to be waiting and watching for somebody, were walking back and forth on Rue Grenétat. One of them, whose beat was from the centre of the street almost to the fountain at the corner of Rue Saint-Denis, wore a long frockcoat which fitted his figure perfectly and was buttoned to the chin, together with straw-colored gloves and the general outfit of a dandy; but when he passed a lighted shop, one could see that his coat was worn and spotted in many places, and that his gloves were no longer perfectly fresh. This gentleman was smoking a cigar with all the grace of a regular customer at Tortoni’s.
The second individual, who was enveloped in an old nut-colored box-coat, with which we are already familiar, wore a round hat, with so broad a brim and so low a crown, that at a short distance he seemed to be arrayed in the headgear of a coal man. He walked only a few steps from a house with a dark passageway, the gate of which was open, to the second or third house on each side of it; but his eyes never lost sight of the passage.
In these two individuals the reader will already have recognized Daréna and his worthy friend Monsieur Poterne.
Since his agent had been unable to do business with the young Marquis de Grandvilain, Daréna had fallen off lamentably from his former magnificence; as his profits had been squandered in a very short time, he had fallen back into what is called noble indigence; “completely cleaned out,” was Monsieur Poterne’s way of stating it.
Daréna still had recourse to his young friend’s purse from time to time; but he was afraid of ruining himself entirely in Chérubin’s estimation, if he abused that method; for, despite his ingenuous candor, the young man was possessed of some natural common sense which enabled him to divine what was not in accordance with propriety; and Daréna did not wish the doors of the hôtel de Grandvilain to be closed to him.
“By God! is that beast of a Poterne making a fool of me?” said Daréna, stopping at the street corner to shake the ashes off his cigar. “The idea of doing sentry-go on Rue Grenétat, where it’s always muddy! It’s like the country! I ought to be in the foyer of the Opéra now! But I forget that my costume is a little seedy! What a beastly cigar! Pah! there’s nothing decent in this region!”
Daréna threw away the end of his cigar, retraced his steps, and, halting beside Poterne, who was leaning against a post, with his eyes fixed on the dark passageway facing him, nudged him with his elbow and said: