Renoux, busy with a bleeding nose, remarked carelessly that Souchez and Alost were taking a train and were in a hurry, and that he himself was going back to the Astor.
“You do not mind coming with me, Barres?” he added. “In my rooms we can have a bite and a glass together, and then we can brush up. That was a nice little fight, was it not, mon ami?”
“Fine,” said Barres with satisfaction.
“Quite like the old and happy days,” mused Renoux, 270 surveying wilted collar and rumpled tie of his comrade. “You came off well; you have merely a bruised cheek.” His eyes began to sparkle and he laughed: “Do you remember that May evening when your very quarrelsome atelier barricaded the Café de la Source and forbade us to enter—and my atelier marched down the Boul’ Mich’ with its Kazoo band playing our atelier march, determined to take your café by assault? Oh, my! What a delightful fight that was!”
“Your crazy comrades stuffed me into the fountain among the goldfish. I thought I’d drown,” said Barres, laughing.
“I know, but your atelier gained a great victory that night, and you came over to Müller’s with your Kazoo band playing the Fireman’s March, and you carried away our palms and bay-trees in their green tubs, and you threw them over the Pont-au-Change into the Seine!——”
They were laughing like a pair of schoolboys now, quite convulsed and holding to each other.
“Do you remember,” gasped Barres, “that girl who danced the Carmagnole on the Quay?”
“Yvonne Tête-de-Linotte!”
“And the British giant from Julien’s, who threw everybody out of the Café Montparnasse and invited the Quarter in to a free banquet?”