“I prefer to sell my bouquets, monsieur.”
“That’s absurd! Unless you have some passion that closes your heart to me, you ought to yield to me.”
“No, monsieur, I feel no sort of obligation to you.”
“Ha! ha! ha! poor Jéricourt! he fails in his suit to a flower girl! That will make Zizi laugh! I’ll tell her at dinner.—I say, my pretty girl, don’t make my bouquet all white, please. The other day I offered one like that to Zizi, and she declared that it looked like a cauliflower.”
“There, monsieur, how is this? Do you like it?”
“Why, yes, it isn’t bad; it has some style! I think that it will produce an effect.—Come,—Jéricourt, as Mademoiselle Violette refuses to dine with you, it seems to me that you can accept my invitation. If I don’t bring you, Zizi will be sulky; she is much livelier when you are there; that is easily understood, for you make her laugh, you make puns, and she declares that there is no such thing as a good dinner without puns.”
“I tell you again, Alfred, that Mademoiselle Violette will not be inexorable; why, I propose to launch her in society, to make her the fashion, for I have all the small newspapers at my disposal.”
“He is telling you the truth, my girl, and the small newspapers are the only ones that are read nowadays, for they are much more amusing than the large ones. For my part, I know nothing better than the Tintamarre! Dieu! the Tintamarre; there’s a newspaper that always drives away the blues! I learn puns from it and I repeat them to Zizi; but unfortunately I don’t remember them very well, so that she doesn’t understand them.—Ah! what a beautiful bouquet!—Well, my dear fellow, will you come?”
And the pretty young man with the light whiskers, holding his enormous bouquet in one hand, tried with the other to lead away his friend, who, half leaning over the flower girl’s counter, was gazing at her with his face close to hers, although she did her utmost to move away from him.
It was at this moment that Chicotin Patatras, who had spied one of his cronies a few steps from Violette’s booth, ran to him and tripped him up,—a method of beginning a conversation decidedly fashionable among street urchins. The friend, taken by surprise, fell upon the sidewalk, and as he rose, saw Chicotin laughing and making fun of him, and apparently challenging him to retaliate. He immediately started to run after him, which was what young Patatras hoped that he would do. When he saw that his comrade was about to overtake him, he jumped back in such a way as to collide with the persons who stood in front of Violette’s booth.