“That’s what Chopard said, to calm me down!”
“Besides, don’t all these dandies—that is what they call these fellows—don’t all these dandies talk that way to women, especially when they are pretty? It’s their way; they must always play the lady-killer; if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be dandies! But I know one of those young men, too; the tallest one is an author,—that means a man who writes plays; his name is Jéricourt; I’ve carried letters to his room sometimes from the other one, who isn’t so tall; that one has employed me often; just now he’s very attentive to an actress at the Folies, a little blonde with black eyes, who plays such parts as Rigolette,—Mademoiselle Dutaillis. I’ll bet that she’s the one he’s going to buy a bouquet for, and then he’ll take her to dinner at Bonvalet’s; and when she’s in the cast, they keep sending me to the theatre, to the box office, to ask how far they have got. I always ask a handsome man who is sitting inside the office, and he answers with a sly look: ‘Go and tell mademoiselle that she has time enough to eat another course, provided that it isn’t carp, because the bones might make her lose her cue.’”
“Oh, yes! I know well enough that it isn’t the light-haired one who is dangerous to Violette; it’s the other one!”
“And why should the other one be dangerous, when everyone says that the little flower girl is virtuous? You yourself told me so a hundred times.”
“Certainly she is virtuous, perfectly virtuous. If she wasn’t, if she was anything else, do you suppose I’d be mad over her as I am?”
“Then what difference does it make to you whether people pay her compliments and make love to her? She won’t listen to them.”
“Who can tell? A young girl sometimes ends by allowing herself to be deceived by all these soft speeches. They offer her dresses, jewels, entertainments, love—it’s all very tempting. Look, see how that tall, scented fellow is leaning over her counter to speak to her! I don’t care; no matter what happens, I am going to tell that man to act different from that!”
“Upon my word! be good enough to stay here. You don’t like to see him talking with the flower girl; very good, let me fix him; I haven’t been nicknamed Patatras for nothing!”
IV
TWO WELL-KNOWN YOUNG MEN
Two young men had, in fact, stopped in front of the pretty flower girl’s booth; each of them was from twenty-six to twenty-eight years of age; their eccentric costumes marked them out as dandies, or at least as persons who strove to appear to be such.