Chérubin rose and paced the floor; he was so suffocated by wrath that he could hardly speak.
“What a shameful thing! to say that of me! to invent such lies! But what could his object have been? Do you know where he took Louise?”
“Oh! to some very fine folks, so he told us.”
“But who are they?”
“Bless me! I didn’t ask that, my dear child, because I had so much confidence in the schoolmaster.”
“So you don’t know where Louise is? Oh! I will find out! I will make him tell me!—I am dying with impatience; I wish I were in Paris now.—Adieu! my dear Nicole! adieu, Jacquinot!”
“What, going already, my fieu? You have hardly got here!”
“And he hasn’t drunk a single glass!”
“I will come again, my friends, I will come again—but with Louise, whom I am wild to find!—Ah! Monsieur Gérondif! you say that I am a rake! We will see! They have all looked upon me as a child hitherto, but I’ll show them that I am their master!”
Chérubin embraced Nicole, shook hands with Jacquinot, and, turning a deaf ear to all that those good people said to pacify him, he returned to his cabriolet, lashed his horse and drove rapidly back to Paris.