“Good-morning, my dear fellow,” he said. “Ah! you are engaged? Very well! I’ll come again.”
The gentleman at once laid aside his pen, rose, and detained the new arrival, saying:
“Why, is it you, my friend? Don’t go, deuce take it! No one ever sees you now! I dined yesterday with someone who talked to me about you. Well, have you sold that cargo of Martinique coffee, the price of which I predicted would fall?”
The newcomer was about to reply when Auguste, rising, walked between him and the banker, and having put on his hat, said to the latter:
“Monsieur, you have kept me waiting for half an hour, unable to give me a minute, and you have the impertinence to enter into conversation in my presence with this gentleman who has just arrived! I have only this much to say to you—that you’re a knave and a rascal! If you can find time to answer that, here’s my address, and I shall expect to hear from you.”
With that Auguste stalked from the room, leaving the busy gentleman utterly bewildered by the compliment paid to him, and unable to find a word to say in reply.
Again Bertrand was awaiting his master’s return; but when Auguste appeared, the other divined the result of his quest. The young man’s eyes shone with anger.
“Black bread and water, eh, monsieur?” asked Bertrand.
“Yes, my friend, yes. Ah! these men! Upon my word, I have good grounds for becoming a misanthrope. I have never known the world so well as since I lost my money. Parvenus who think that they may presume to go any length because they are millionaires! Men of intellect who think of nobody but themselves, and who, provided that they are coddled and amused, show the most absolute indifference to everything else! People with the most polished manners who cheat you out of your money! Conceited asses who want to be flattered, fools who flatter them, parasites who suck your blood, swindlers who ruin you, and men who turn their backs on you when you’re unlucky! Those are what I see now. And they are just what have always been seen, so ’tis said. Men are the same everywhere; they were no different before the Flood, and the study of history is simply the study of the passions which have ruled the actions of the human race for ages.”
“In all this, my lieutenant, you forget the women, who——”