“‘Oh, I shall be much kinder before I have done. Just imagine it, poor M. Denisart has been worried into the jaundice! Yes, it has gone to the liver, as it usually does with susceptible old men. It is a pity he feels things so. I told him so myself; I said, “Be passionate, there is no harm in that, but as for taking things to heart--draw the line at that! It is the way to kill yourself.”--Really, I would not have expected him to take on so about it; a man that has sense enough and experience enough to keep away as he does while he digests his dinner--’
“‘But what is the matter?’ inquired Mlle. Chocardelle.
“‘That little baggage with whom I dined has cleared out and left him! ... Yes. Gave him the slip without any warning but a letter, in which the spelling was all to seek.’
“‘There, Daddy Croizeau, you see what comes of boring a woman--’
“‘It is indeed a lesson, my pretty lady,’ said the guileful Croizeau. ‘Meanwhile, I have never seen a man in such a state. Our friend Denisart cannot tell his left hand from his right; he will not go back to look at the “scene of his happiness,” as he calls it. He has so thoroughly lost his wits, that he proposes that I should buy all Hortense’s furniture (Hortense was her name) for four thousand francs.’
“‘Yes. Napoleon’s stepdaughter was called Hortense. I built carriages for her, as you know.’
“‘Very well, I will see,’ said cunning Antonia; ‘begin by sending this young woman to me.’
“Antonia hurried off to see the furniture, and came back fascinated. She brought Maxime under the spell of antiquarian enthusiasm. That very evening the Count agreed to the sale of the reading-room. The establishment, you see, nominally belonged to Mlle. Chocardelle. Maxime burst out laughing at the idea of little Croizeau’s finding him a buyer. The firm of Maxime and Chocardelle was losing two thousand francs, it is true, but what was the loss compared with four glorious thousand-franc notes in hand? ‘Four thousand francs of live coin!--there are moments in one’s life when one would sign bills for eight thousand to get them,’ as the Count said to me.
“Two days later the Count must see the furniture himself, and took the four thousand francs upon him. The sale had been arranged; thanks to little Croizeau’s diligence, he pushed matters on; he had ‘come round’ the widow, as he expressed it. It was Maxime’s intention to have all the furniture removed at once to a lodging in a new house in the Rue Tronchet, taken in the name of Mme. Ida Bonamy; he did not trouble himself much about the nice old man that was about to lose his thousand francs. But he had sent beforehand for several big furniture vans.