"All right! all right!" he cried; "I thank you for your advice, but I flatter myself that I shall be able to manage my fortune as well as any other man. Let us drop the subject, my friend, and think only of pleasures, of merry-making. In my opinion, when a man is rich, life should be simply a torrent of enjoyments.—Finish your dressing and let’s go out to breakfast; I invite you to breakfast with me at the Café Anglais, or the Café de la Bourse, or Véry’s, if you choose."
"You come too late, my dear Robineau; I have breakfasted."
"What’s the odds? You can begin again."
"No indeed! Do you think that because one is rich, one can eat every minute of the day without making one’s self sick?"
"The devil! that’s a pity. I have already had some coffee and tea, but I want a déjeuner à la fourchette—that’s better form.—By the way, my dear Alfred, as to form I will take your advice. I know that you follow the fashions, and I propose to follow them too, strictly.—Twenty-five thousand francs a year! Why, just imagine my joy!"
"Faith, I congratulate you; for you are a good fellow at bottom."
"If you knew how many plans I already have in my head! I mean to do so many things that I don’t know where to begin!—But let us go to breakfast, I beg; you can pretend to eat."
The two young men were about to go out when Edouard appeared. Robineau did not give him time to bid his friend good-morning, but threw his arms about his neck, embraced him and apprized him of the change that had taken place in his fortune. Edouard quietly congratulated him, and Robineau could not understand why the news did not produce a greater effect on him; he conceived that all those who were about him ought to be equally excited and enchanted on learning that he had twenty-five thousand francs a year.
"I came to ask you to breakfast with me," Edouard said to Alfred.
Giving the latter no time to reply, Robineau seized Edouard’s arm and cried: