“I assure you, madame, that he is a very good-looking fellow; at the theatre he never sits anywhere but in the proscenium boxes!”
“As he never sits anywhere but in the proscenium,” said Dufournelle, “he is necessarily a young man of very high station.”
“Let’s rehearse, my friends, let us rehearse.”
“But we are not all here yet, young Kingerie and Monsieur Fourriette the druggist are still missing.”
“I d—d—don’t want to f—f—fight with Monsieur F—F—Fourriette!” said Mademoiselle Eolinde; “he always hits me on the f—f—fingers with his sword.”
“The trouble is that he puts too much action into his part; these druggists are generally very warm, especially as they are almost always from the South. Why is it that the South supplies more druggists and more apothecaries than the North? That is a question I have often asked myself. What do you say upon that point, messieurs?”
“It seems to me easy enough to understand,” said Monsieur Dufournelle. “It’s because sun dials are always placed in the south.”
“Oh! excellent! excellent!”
“I don’t understand the joke,” said Monsieur Camuzard, blowing his nose.
At last, Messieurs Kingerie and Fourriette appeared on the road; the first, as awkward as ever, began by upsetting a box of cactus which stood in a path where there was much more room than he required. As for the druggist, a dark-haired, very good-looking youth, he was all curled and perfumed, and made eyes at all the ladies, to whom he did not fail to offer pastilles which he had made himself.