"You are not angry, I trust, Robineau?"
"I! angry!—Why so, pray? You like to laugh and joke, and so do I, when I have time."
"Yes, I know that you are a good fellow at bottom. Look you—to prove to me that you bear me no grudge because I insisted upon casting a profane eye into the administrative portfolio, you must come to my house this evening; my father gives a large reception—I don’t quite know on what occasion; but this much I do know—that there will be cards and dancing and some very pretty women. Despite your little every-day passion, you are a connoisseur of the sex, and you must come. Edouard will be with us—he has promised me; we will win his money at écarté, and that will help him to forget his last failure. And then, who knows? perhaps he will find among the company a beauty who will wipe from his heart the memory of his faithless fair.—Well! will you come?"
Robineau’s face fairly beamed while Alfred proffered his invitation; he grasped his hand again and shook it hard, as he replied:
"My dear friend—certainly—I am deeply touched. This courteous invitation——"
"Enough fine phrases! Is there any need of ceremony between us? I intended to write to you; but you know how thoughtless I am, and I forgot all about it.—Then you will come?"
"I most certainly shall have that honor, and I am——"
"All right, it’s understood; until this evening, then; and we will try to enjoy ourselves, which is not always easy at grand functions."
With that the young man and his companion, after nodding to the Treasury clerk, walked rapidly away, leaving Robineau in the garden of the Palais-Royal, so engrossed by the invitation he had just received and by the prospect of passing the evening at the Baron de Marcey’s, that, if his feet had not been arrested by the raised rim of the basin, he would have walked straight into the water on the way to his favorite restaurant.