“Pardieu! that reminds me that I lost three thousand francs at écarté the day before yesterday,” said the marquis carelessly.
“I won four thousand two days ago, at the house of a banker, who’s a friend of mine,” replied La Thomassinière instantly.
“Oh! that’s a mere trifle! When I play, I do it for the sake of doing something!” said the marquis.
“To be sure,” said La Thomassinière; “I am not sure that I didn’t forget to take the four thousand francs from the table, I pay so little attention to money!”
“But a month ago,” said the marquis, “I was in a really serious game—the stakes were no less than eighty thousand francs.”
“I staked a house last winter,” rejoined La Thomassinière; “it was not built, to be sure, and unluckily the contractor failed the next day, for the third time.”
Auguste listened in silence to his two neighbors, as they tossed the ball back and forth. But at last La Thomassinière, fearing that he might be unable to think of anything with which to cap the marquis’s next boast, changed the subject.
“What do you think of this view?” he asked.
“Very pretty,” the marquis replied; “but why not have embellished it with some picturesque ruins—fabriques—here and there?”
“Oh! I didn’t want any factories—fabriques—on my property! The idea! Workmen are noisy, always singing, and I don’t choose to have anything to do with that sort of people.”