“Take care, madame, take care,” said Dufournelle, “it is very imprudent to accept monsieur’s pastilles; you don’t know what he may have put in them! He is quite capable of giving you something that will make you fall in love with him.”
“If I knew that secret, I should not fail to make use of it,” said Monsieur Fourriette, still offering his box and smiling at the ladies.
“Well! I don’t care, I will take the risk!” said Mademoiselle Mangeot, putting her fingers in the bonbonnière.
“It seems to me,” said Mademoiselle Dufournelle in an undertone, “that she isn’t the one who is taking the risk at this moment!—Well, I will take the risk myself.”
“Let’s rehearse, my friends, let’s rehearse; just see how the time is passing; let us go to the theatre at once, we are all here.”
“All except the three robbers with speaking parts.”
“We will omit that scene.”
“And the child,—we must have the child, we must make sure that he knows his part.”
“Astianax, go and fetch little Codinde, the gardener’s son.”
“Here’s the gardener himself coming this way; he looks as if he wanted to speak to you.”