"Oh! messieurs, how young you are, what children!"
"May we long be children! The sweetest sensations are always those that remind us of our youth!"
"Let us go on, messieurs, let us go on, I beg. I see nothing very pretty in this rocky road.—Well! Monsieur Edouard, what are you looking at in the air?"
"Why, don’t you see that goat standing on the very edge of the precipice? It seems to me that its feet hardly touch the ground; and it puts out its head and gazes undismayed into the vast space over which it is almost suspended!"
"Oh! this is too much, messieurs! As if you had never seen goats before! The idea of wasting your time watching them! Parbleu! they’re not made any differently here from those at the Jardin des Plantes; indeed, they’re not so handsome. If you should see a bear now, or a lion, why, you might very well stop to gaze at him!"
"Oh! I am very sure that you wouldn’t stop even for that!"
"This infernal road will never come to an end! That peasant must have directed us wrong. We shall end by going astray, by losing ourselves in these mountains.—Ah! how sorry I am now that we didn’t take a guide!"
"It’s your own fault; why did you refuse to accept the services of that man who offered?"
"Whom do you mean? that beggar, that miserable fellow who didn’t even take off his hat when he spoke to us?"
"Is it necessary for a guide to study good manners?"