"Then it will go all by itself. Au revoir, my dear neighbor; overjoyed to make your acquaintance. You will allow me to come and inquire for your health?"
"I shall please often. Au revoir then; at your service; don't move."
"To be sure; I keep forgetting your gout; what a thoughtless creature I am!--Your servant."
Saint-Arthur bowed to the ground this time, then left the house, saying to Beauvinet, whom he passed on the way:
"I have seen the gentleman who rooms beside me, and he is a delightful man, a man of the greatest merit, a man whom I expect to see a great deal of; and _sapristi!_ no one had better speak ill of him in my presence; whoever does so will have me to reckon with!"
The young man of the house was thunderstruck at these words, and in his effort to recover his wits, he pulled his wig over his left ear.
Thus Saint-Arthur became, as to Monsieur de Roncherolle, a zealous, courteous, obliging, and above all, a very neighborly neighbor. The little dandy, seeing the gouty gentleman frequently, was astonished to find him possessed of much intelligence and joviality, with a piquant, original way of telling a story, and a memory abundantly supplied with comical, entertaining and sometimes rather risqué anecdotes; but in Saint-Arthur's eyes this last quality doubled their merit; he tried to remember some of the tales that Roncherolle had told him, and went off to repeat them to his mistress, who was greatly amused and said to him:
"My word! why, you know any number of funny stories now! it's amazing, my dear; do you know that you are really getting to be amusing; can it be that you have some wit of your own? Oh! how well you have concealed your capacity!"
"Why, yes, I have concealed it," replied Saint-Arthur, stroking his chin; "I'm concealing lots of other things, too."
"Oh! you surprise me more and more, my dear."
Roncherolle, being forced to keep his room, was not sorry someone should come to visit him; the nonsense of his little messenger made him laugh; the story of his new friend's _bonnes fortunes_ diverted him mightily; and when Saint-Arthur said to him: "Don't you think that I am a fortunate mortal with the ladies?" he would reply with a slight shrug: "It's a fact that the ladies are very fond of men like you."