"Hush, Chicotin, don't say that, I beg you!"
"I say it because I see it; I don't need to be a sleep-walker to guess that! You're in love with the pretty flower girl, Mamzelle Violette!"
"You don't need to tell it, it's plain enough; that's what upsets you so, and changes your whole disposition, and gives you a sour look, a dismal expression, like Monsieur Goujet of the Gaîté, when he plays the traitors, the abductors who carry off young girls! Ah! how magnificent he was in _'Martin et Bamboche!'_ I was a little bit of a fellow when I saw that, but I still have the piece in my head all the same, it impressed me so. He had on a white coat, rather neat, did Monsieur Goujet; he played the part of a well-dressed son, who treated his father like the deuce!--Confound it! He isn't listening to me because I've stopped talking about the flower girl! Why, is this passion of yours making you an idiot? As if a man ever fell in love for good at your age! For my part, I like pretty girls too; but it doesn't make me so stupid as it does you! it never lasts more than a week! Let your beard grow, then you'll have the right to pose as a sentimental lover! Ah! now he turns as red as a turkey-cock! What is going on? Ah! I see; because two fine gentlemen, two swells have stopped and are looking at the flower girl's wares. I suppose you'd like it if nobody ever bought anything of your pretty dealer? She'd do a fine business then!"
"Oh! but I know those two young men; they come very often to buy flowers of her and they always talk nonsense to her; especially the tallest one! He actually dared one time to ask her to be his mistress! Ah! if big Chopard hadn't held me back, I'd have jumped on him; I'd have scratched him and bitten him!"
"Hoity-toity! is that the way you propose to treat Mamzelle Violette's customers? You'll give her shop a good reputation!"
"That's what Chopard said, to calm me down!"
"Besides, don't all these dandies--that is what they call these fellows--don't all these dandies talk that way to women, especially when they are pretty? It's their way; they must always play the lady-killer; if they didn't, they wouldn't be dandies! But I know one of those young men, too; the tallest one is an author,--that means a man who writes plays; his name is Jéricourt; I've carried letters to his room sometimes from the other one, who isn't so tall; that one has employed me often; just now he's very attentive to an actress at the Folies, a little blonde with black eyes, who plays such parts as Rigolette,--Mademoiselle Dutaillis. I'll bet that she's the one he's going to buy a bouquet for, and then he'll take her to dinner at Bonvalet's; and when she's in the cast, they keep sending me to the theatre, to the box office, to ask how far they have got. I always ask a handsome man who is sitting inside the office, and he answers with a sly look: 'Go and tell mademoiselle that she has time enough to eat another course, provided that it isn't carp, because the bones might make her lose her cue.'"