"Oh! I know you—with your assumption of indifference! It’s just as it used to be at school: it made little difference to you what you had for dinner; but the next day you would play sick in order to get soup."
As he spoke, the tall young man turned toward his friend, who could not help smiling; while Robineau, to change the subject, hastily addressed the latter.
"Well, Monsieur Edouard, how goes the literary career, the drama? Successful as always, of course? You are used to that."
Edouard made a faint grimace, and Alfred roared with laughter, crying:
"Ah! you were well-advised to talk to him of success! You have no idea what chord you have touched!—What, Robineau! have you not divined from that long face, that frowning brow, a poet who has met with an accident? who has been victimized by a cabal? That, in a word, you are looking upon a fallen author?"
"The deuce! is it so?—What! Monsieur Edouard, have you had a fall?"
"Yes, monsieur," Edouard replied, with a faint sigh.
"Ah! that is amusing!"
"You consider it amusing, do you?"
"I meant to say, extraordinary—for you have sometimes succeeded.—Was it very bad then?—that is to say, didn’t it take?"