"Heaven fulfil your prophecy!"
"You astonish me! I thought you friends."
"Friends!" repeated Bouchereau, with mingled irony, and indignation.
"Que diantre! Speak out, or hold your tongue. I am no Œdipus to guess your riddle."
The impatience that sparkled in the doctor's eyes brought his doleful friend to the substance of his intended confession.
"Well, my dear Magnian," said he, in an agitated voice, "in two words, here is the case: Pelletier makes love to my wife."
To conceal a smile, the doctor protruded his under-lip, and nodded his head several times with affected gravity.
"Who would have thought it?" he at last exclaimed. "I never suspected the great dragoon of such good taste. But are you quite sure? Husbands are usually the last persons to discover those things."
"I am only too sure; and you shall hear how. My wife is at Fontainbleau, passing a few days with her mother. The day before yesterday I happened to remark that the key of my desk fitted her drawers. Mechanically, I opened one of them, and in a sort of mysterious pigeon-hole I found several letters from Pelletier."
"The deuce you did! But why open drawers belonging to your wife?"