“It isn’t that, mamma; I said: ‘what connection is there between a pomegranate—grenadier—and my father, who has never been a soldier?’ Oh! if he had been a soldier, I could understand your choice of this shrub and the allusion, but——”
“But, my dear boy, you are terribly tiresome with your allusions; you want to put allusions in everything; just wait until you are a man.”
“Excuse me, dear mamma, but flowers have a language; so in your place I should have thought that a myrtle, the emblem of love——”
“My dear boy, I have been giving your father myrtles for twenty years and he must have had enough of them. Everything in life goes by, and we have used the myrtle long enough; it seems to me that I can properly vary it a little. After twenty years one is not forbidden to change bouquets. I have decided, I am going to buy this pomegranate.—Don’t you think, Eolinde, that this will please your father?”
“Oh! ye—ye—yes, it will pl—please him very mu—u—uch.”
“But what are you going to buy for him? You must make up your mind, children, for we intend to go to the play after dinner, and it is getting late.”
“B—b—bless me!” replied the tall young lady, “I would li—i—ike that fl—fl—flower—you know—you know—it’s the—I d—d—don’t see it.”
“But what flower? tell us its name.”
“I d—d—don’t reme—e—ember.”
“In that case, ask the woman if she has any,” said Monsieur Astianax, smiling maliciously, for he very often made fun of the difficulty which his sister had in speaking.