At sight of his friend, Georget uttered a joyful exclamation and threw himself into Chicotin's arms; whereupon the latter, without stopping to rest or to take breath, proceeded to tell his comrade all that had happened to Violette,—her journey to Nogent, her despair, her illness, and finally her recovery.
It would be difficult to describe Georget's state during this narrative; listening intently, choking with grief, weeping and uttering cries of joy in turn, he exclaimed:
"She is not guilty! what joy! poor girl, turned away, determined to die! Oh! mon Dieu! I should have died too!"
He hardly gave his friend time to finish his story; he leaped on his neck, embraced him, kissed him again and again, stammering in a voice broken by sobs:
"It was you who saved her; it was due to you that she did not throw herself into the canal, where she would have died; for so late at night no one would have seen her, no one would have taken her out of the water! Ah! I love you almost as much as I do her; I pray for only one thing, and that is, that I may be able to prove my gratitude some day!"
"Well, well! what a silly fellow! here's a lot of talk for the simplest kind of an action: a man sees a girl trying to kill herself, and prevents her—I should like to know if that thing isn't done every day; any boy in the street would do as much."
"So it was really she who came here! My heart guessed it, but that cruel man deceived me; he told me that it wasn't she, because he had made her cry and had turned her out of the house with harsh words! Oh! that was shameful, and I will not stay any longer in a house where Violette received such an affront. Wait here for me, Chicotin."
"What are you going to do?"
"Pack up my things, and I'll go away with you; my mother will come after us."
"Bah! more nonsense! what does this mean? You mean to leave a man who has never been anything but kind to you, in such a way as this, without even saying good-bye to him? A man who, when your mother was sick and you hadn't a sou, gave you all that you needed to take care of her; a man who has taken you into his family, with your mother, and quartered you in this little château, where you are living like pigs in clover—you yourself said so? Well! that would be pretty! and you talk of gratitude, and this is the way you propose to treat your protector!"