"As you command, belle dame."
"Why, do you know that you're a hard-headed party? Champagne doesn't seem to affect you at all. You drink more than we do, and you don't seem to notice it."
"That is the result of my long studies—another advantage of age!"
"Look at Alfred; he hasn't drunk half as much as you, I'll bet, and his eyes are in curl-papers already; anyone would think he was going to sleep."
"I—oh! I haven't any desire to sleep; I was engaged in thought."
"Of the baroness whom he escorted home, no doubt!" said Jéricourt, with an ironical glance at the gentleman who aroused his displeasure, and whose emotion at the mention of the baroness's name he had noticed.
"Are you going to stuff us some more with your titled lady?" cried Mademoiselle Zizi; "bah! what a tease this Jéricourt is!"
"That subject bores you, my sweet angel; forgive me, I won't mention that lady again. However, I believe that this Madame de Grangeville is nothing more than a counterfeit baroness."
"What makes you think so, monsieur? By what right do you insult that lady?" demanded Roncherolle, in a tone in which there was no trace of jesting, and with a by no means amicable glance at the man of letters.