"Forgotten you! what a stupid you are! What does that mean? why should I have forgotten you? weren't we friends? I should like to know if friends part like an old pair of breeches, which you never expect to put on again? Forgotten! why, I've hunted for you in every corner of Paris! I've been to your house, after asking Mamzelle Violette for your address, for I didn't know it!"
"You asked Mamzelle Violette for my address?"
"To be sure; I had to ask her, to find out."
"And what did she say when you mentioned me?"
"Pardi! she told me that you lived on Rue d'Angoulême. I went there, and I found a tall, thin brute of a concierge who was as drunk as a fool and fighting with a woman—she must have been his wife, for she called him a blackguard!"
"Didn't she say anything else?"
"The old woman said: 'They've gone away, and we don't know where they are.'"
"But Violette—Violette——"
"The flower girl? Oh! I don't know what's the matter with her, poor girl, but for sometime past she's been as sad as can be; she never laughs now, she has changed completely! But bless my soul! perhaps she was unhappy because she didn't see you any more; you, who used to pass your days with her, all of a sudden you drop her, without even bidding her good-bye, so it seems! That's a very nice way to act! If I'd behaved like that, why it would have been all right! Nobody would have been surprised, but they'd have said: 'Oh! that Patatras! that's just like his tricks! Appear and disappear! like Rotomago in the marionette show.'—But you, Georget, a fellow as polite as you, with the manners of a solicitor's clerk! Really, I shouldn't have expected it of you."
While listening to his old comrade, Georget kept his eyes fixed on the flower girl, who was still arranging her flowers. But there came a moment when the girl raised her head and turned her eyes in Georget's direction. He was convinced that she had seen him, and instantly, dragging Chicotin away, he forced him to leave the boulevard, saying in a choking voice: