“What do fine ladies like them amount to anyway! one wants to see Père Mauflard’s drawers, and the other dresses up as a ghost; they act as if they was pretty gay girls!”
When the neighbors had gone, no one thought of anything but retiring. Virginie and her friend went to their chamber and to bed, and soon fell asleep, one nursing her bites, the other lisping that the tall young man had many of Théodore’s attributes. Mère Fourcy and Coco went to sleep also. Denise alone could obtain no rest; she thought constantly of Auguste, of the change in his fortunes, and of what she could do for him to prove her friendship. But she no longer felt any inclination to ask the advice of the ladies from Paris, because all the foolish antics in which she had seen them indulge had somewhat lessened her esteem for them. She felt that she must be guided by her heart alone; she was sure that it would never give her any advice for which she would need to blush.
The next morning, after breakfast, the ladies, being already sadly bored in the country, where they desired at first to pass a fortnight, bade Mère Fourcy and Denise adieu and took their places in the Paris coach.
“Ah! my dear,” said Virginie, “how I long to be in Paris! it seems to me that it’s six months since I saw Rue Montmartre and the Ambigu-Comique.”
“What do you think of me, who haven’t theen Théodore for twenty-four hourth!”
“Say what you will, there’s no place but Paris for fun and dress and the theatre and punch!”
“Ah! if I had to live in the country, I thould die there!”
XIX
A MAN IN A THOUSAND
After his visit to the old man on the fifth floor, Auguste had made a vow to be prudent and to profit by the lesson which the unfortunate Dorfeuil had unconsciously given him. But an old proverb says: “Drive away the natural, and it returns at a gallop;” and Auguste’s nature still impelled him to do foolish things. Moreover, being unable thenceforth, by reason of an instinctive delicacy for which he cannot be blamed, to seek diversion at his window, he was driven to seek it elsewhere. From his more prosperous days Auguste had retained the habit of playing the grand seigneur, of reckoning the cost of nothing, of following only his first impulse. He was as generous to the unfortunate as to his mistresses: to confer pleasure on others is such a gratifying habit that it is very hard to abandon it. There are people, however, who have never known that gratification.
Upon examining his cash-box, Bertrand had discovered the enormous deficit consequent upon Auguste’s visit to the old man. Unable to understand how his master could have spent so much money in so short a time, Bertrand concluded that they had been robbed, and made an infernal row. He proposed to go down and cudgel Schtrack and his wife, to teach them to allow thieves to enter the house; but Auguste detained him, saying: