Louise gazed at Monsieur Gérondif in surprise, as if to ask him what he meant; but he had turned to Nicole.
“What, already, Monsieur Gérondif, without eating a mouthful, and without taking a drop to drink?”
“Have a glass of wine,” said Jacquinot; “nobody ever refuses that.”
“Pardon me, my dear Frimousset, but it’s very easy to refuse it, when you are in the habit, as I am, of drinking fine wines; your _sour_ stuff would make me sick now.”
“Excellent Nicole, I know that there are potted quail for dinner to-day,--Mademoiselle Turlurette told me so,--and it would be uncivil to myself not to take my share of them. Au revoir, virtuous country folk; Nicole, watch over this little pearl--_margarita_; I commend her to your care. And you, sweet Louise, do not give way to sorrow; you have a grand future before you assuredly! _This oracle is more reliable than the oracle of Calchas._ I wish you all the best of health, and I fly to Villemonble to take the diligence.”
As he spoke, Monsieur Gérondif bestowed an expansive smile upon each in turn; he added to the young girl’s smile an exceedingly ardent glance, and took his leave, resuming his shiny hat and his glazed gloves.
“He tells me not to give way to sorrow,” thought Louise, when he had gone; “and Chérubin gave him no message for me!”
Chérubin must inevitably appear ungrateful and fickle in his affection, for he seems to have forgotten very quickly good Nicole, who had reared him, and little Louise, his playmate, whom he said that he loved so dearly. But such ingratitude and inconstancy are too natural in man for us to be surprised at finding them in a mere boy. Chérubin had just entered his eighteenth year; he was surrounded by people whose only aim was to make life in Paris attractive to him, who were constantly occupied in affording him new pleasures, and who did not fail to make sport of him and rally him on account of the time he had passed at his nurse’s. Ridicule is a very potent weapon among the French; grown men fear and do everything to avoid it; could a child of seventeen be expected to set it at naught?
However, Chérubin was not so forgetful as one might suppose. He had often longed to go to see Nicole and Louise; but, in order to divert him from that design, they had, in the first place, carefully concealed from him the nurse’s two visits to the house; then they had told him that Madame Frimousset had sent Louise away to a kinswoman in Bretagne, in order to help her to forget the grief caused by her young friend’s departure.