"Oh, Queen! your courtesy touches me so sensibly that I must allow you to read in the depths of my heart the name of my future spouse," exclaimed Dumoulin."She is called Madame Honoree-Modeste-Messaline-Angele de la Sainte-Colombe, widow."
"Bravo! bravo!"
"She is sixty years old, and has more thousands of francs-a-year than she has hair in her gray moustache or wrinkles on her face; she is so superbly fat that one of her gowns would serve as a tent for this honorable company.I hope to present my future spouse to you on Shrove-
Tuesday, in the costume of a shepherdess that has just devoured her flock.Some of them wish to convert her--but I have undertaken to divert her, which she will like better.You must help me to plunge her headlong into all sorts of skylarking jollity."
"We will plunge her into anything you please."
"She shall dance like sixty!" said Rose-Pompon, humming a popular tune.
"She will overawe the police."
"We can say to them: `Respect this lady; your mother will perhaps be as old some day!'"
Suddenly, the Bacchanal Queen rose; her countenance wore a singular expression of bitter and sardonic delight.In one hand she held a glass full to the brim."I hear the Cholera is approaching in his seven-league boots," she cried."I drink luck to the Cholera!" And she emptied the bumper.
Notwithstanding the general gayety, these words made a gloomy impression;
a sort of electric shudder ran through the assemblage, and nearly every countenance became suddenly serious.
"Oh, Cephyse!" said Jacques, in a tone of reproach.
"Luck to the Cholera," repeated the Queen, fearlessly."Let him spare those who wish to live, and kill together those who dread to part!"
Jacques and Cephyse exchanged a rapid glance, unnoticed by their joyous companions, and for some time the Bacchanal Queen remained silent and thoughtful.
"If you put it that way, it is different," cried Rose-Pompon, boldly.
"To the Cholera! may none but good fellows be left on earth!"
In spite of this variation, the impression was still painfully impressive.Dumoulin, wishing to cut short this gloomy subject, exclaimed: "Devil take the dead, and long live the living! And, talking of chaps who both live and live well, I ask you to drink a health most dear to our joyous queen, the health of our Amphitryon.Unfortunately, I do not know his respectable name, having only had the advantage of making his acquaintance this night; he will excuse me, then, if I confine myself to proposing the health of Sleepinbuff--a name by no means offensive to my modesty, as Adam never slept in any other manner.I drink to Sleepinbuff."
"Thanks, old son!" said Jacques, gayly; "were I to forget your name, I should call you `Have-a-sip?' and I am sure that you would answer: `I will.'"
"I will directly!" said Dumoulin, making the military salute with one hand, and holding out the bowl with the other.
"As we have drunk together," resumed Sleepinbuff, cordially, "we ought to know each other thoroughly.I am Jacques Rennepont?"
"Rennepont!" cried Dumoulin, who appeared struck by the name, in spite of his half-drunkenness; "you are Rennepont?"
"Rennepont in the fullest sense of the word.Does that astonish you?"
"There is a very ancient family of that name--the Counts of Rennepont."
"The deuce there is!" said the other, laughing.
"The Counts of Rennepont are also Dukes of Cardoville," added Dumoulin.
"Now, come, old fellow! do I look as if I belonged to such a family?--I, a workman out for a spree?"
"You a workman? why, we are getting into the Arabian Nights!" cried Dumoulin, more and more surprised."You give us a Belshazzar's banquet, with accompaniment of carriages and four, and yet are a workman? Only tell me your trade, and I will join you, leaving the Vine of the Divine to take care of itself."
"Come, I say! don't think that I am a printer of flimsies, and a smasher!" replied Jacques, laughing.
"Oh, comrade! no such suspicion--"
"It would be excusable, seeing the rigs I run.But I'll make you easy on that point.I am spending an inheritance."
"Eating and drinking an uncle, no doubt?" said Dumoulin, benevolently.
"Faith, I don't know."
"What! you don't know whom you are eating and drinking?"
"Why, you see, in the first place, my father was a bone-grubber."
"The devil he was!" said Dumoulin, somewhat out of countenance, though in general not over-scrupulous in the choice of his bottle-companions: but, after the first surprise, he resumed, with the most charming amenity:
"There are some rag-pickers very high by scent--I mean descent!"
"To be sure! you may think to laugh at me," said Jacques, "but you are right in this respect, for my father was a man of very great merit.He spoke Greek and Latin like a scholar, and often told me that he had not his equal in mathematics; besides, he had travelled a good deal."
"Well, then," resumed Dumoulin, whom surprise had partly sobered, "you may belong to the family of the Counts of Rennepont, after all."
"In which case," said Rose-Pompon, laughing, "your father was not a gutter-snipe by trade, but only for the honor of the thing."
"No, no--worse luck! it was to earn his living," replied Jacques; "but, in his youth, he had been well off.By what appeared, or rather by what did not appear, he had applied to some rich relation, and the rich relation had said to him: 'Much obliged! try the work'us.' Then he wished to make use of his Greek, and Latin, and mathematics.Impossible to do anything--Paris, it seems, being choke-full of learned men--so my father had to look for his bread at the end of a hooked stick, and there, too, he must have found it, for I ate of it during two years, when I came to live with him after the death of an aunt, with whom I had been staying in the country."
"Your respectable father must have been a sort of philosopher," said Dumoulin; "but, unless he found an inheritance in a dustbin, I don't see how you came into your property."
