“But your friend has fallen too, monsieur, and he doesn’t get up!—Help him! Perhaps he’s hurt himself!”
At these words from Violette, Jéricourt condescended at last to pay some attention to his companion; with the assistance of Chicotin, he succeeded, not without difficulty, in placing him on his feet; for Alfred was almost suffocated; two rosebuds had been forced into each nostril, and had entered far enough to close them hermetically; and as he had in addition a bunch of gilly-flowers over his mouth, he could not breathe at all, and was beginning to turn purple. Once upon his feet, he opened his mouth as if he proposed to swallow everything in his neighborhood, and shook his head to try to rid himself of the two rosebuds, whose thorny stems tickled the lower part of his face unpleasantly. But he could not succeed; Jéricourt had to pull one of the stems and Chicotin the other, to uncork his nose. This operation was not performed without a number of shrieks from Monsieur de Saint-Arthur, but his nose at last recovered its air current, and everybody’s mind was at ease.
When the young dandy recovered all his faculties, the thing that troubled him most was that he had broken one of his suspenders, and that his trousers on that side were not held in place.
“All sorts of misfortunes at once,” cried Alfred; “I have broken my left suspender. But who was it, then, who came down on me like a bomb and pushed me onto that counter?”
“Excuse me, master, my excellency, I did it by accident, and not on purpose, for I was fooling with Chopard.”
“What, you scoundrel, was it you?—Ah! I recognize you; I have employed you more than once.”
“Oh! I remember very well! You are one of those generous and distinguished gentlemen that a man doesn’t forget. I have often opened your carriage door, master, and you are always with such pretty ladies, ladies from the theatre, and so well dressed, that everybody looks at you. Shall I wait at Monsieur Bonvalet’s, master, to see if you want to send me to find out how far they’ve got in the play?”
“All right, all right, we’ll see. After all, as he didn’t do it on purpose—And my bouquet, what became of that in the scrimmage?”
“Here it is, monsieur,” said Violette; “luckily nothing happened to it.”
“It’s my broken suspender that worries me most; my trousers are all creased on that side! I’d give thirty francs for a pair of suspenders.”