“Agree that I am very unlucky.”
“It is your own fault. When you breakfast tête-à-tête with a lady, you should not stuff yourself with plums, especially after you have already eaten heartily, as you seem to have done.”
“I did it to give myself courage, nerve!”
“What you did give yourself was very agreeable.”
“Well, no such accident will happen in my next tête-à-tête with Madame Célival; I shall have better luck next time.”
“Oh! don’t flatter yourself that you will obtain a second assignation from the fair widow. You are ruined in her esteem, as well as in the little countess’s. That makes another conquest that you must abandon.”
“Do you think so? How unfair! Does a woman cease to love us because we are suddenly taken ill?”
“Not for that reason, but because you behaved so clumsily.”
“What would you have done in my place?”
“I would have said frankly that my breakfast was disturbing me, that I was feeling very sick; then she would have understood and excused my departure.”