“Why, I often dine with my friend and his brother, who’s one of the biggest butchers in Paris!”
“And I sometimes keep my cousin’s desk; she’s a baker and sells pastry, and only gentlemen with canary-colored gloves come to her little place to eat.”
“Very good, mesdames, very good; we are certain now that you are worthy to go into good society, and that you know how to behave decorously. Oh! if Monsieur d’Hurbain had not come to dine with us! But he has come, for I see him and Monfréville getting out of the tilbury. We have arrived; come, my young marquis, hand out the ladies.”
The carriage stopped and the door was opened; a porcupine’s head appeared, surmounting a body clad in an old nut-colored box-coat, the collar of which was marred by some very extensive spots of grease. It was Monsieur Poterne, who had stepped forward to assist the ladies to alight.
Malvina drew back, crying:
“Great God! what sort of thing is that? An owl, a hedgehog?”
“It is my—my business agent,” replied Daréna; “he has looked to it that everything is properly prepared, and now he has come to assist you to alight; he is an extremely obliging man.”
“He may possibly be obliging, but he is very ugly; isn’t he, Rosina?”
“Yes. Oh! how stupid it is to be ugly like that!”
“And when you look from him to our charming little Monsieur Chérubin!”