enemy.—But no matter, you have turned his head.”

“Mon Dieu! to hear you, Georget, one would think that everybody is in love with me!”

“Well, it seems to me that you don’t lack suitors and gallants. There are days when a fellow can’t get near your shop, there are so many people around you!”

“I have no reason to complain, that is true. I sell a great deal. My bouquets seem to please.”

“Oh! your bouquets—and yourself too. When the dealer is good-looking, that makes business good; and deuce take it! you are mighty good-looking.”

“You know very well, Georget, that nothing tires me so much as compliments!”

“Then you must get tired very often! you receive them all day!”

“I can’t prevent the gentlemen who buy flowers of me from talking nonsense to me! but it seems to me that you might get along without it.”

“So what I say to you is nonsense, is it?”

“Instead of idling away your time every market day, walking back and forth in front of my stand, wouldn’t you do better to work?”

“Do you mean that you don’t like to have me stop in front of your shop sometimes, mamzelle?”

“I don’t say that, but I ask you if you would not do better to work.”

“All right, mamzelle, that’s enough. I won’t stand near you any more, never fear! If you don’t like it, why, I——”

“Oh! how wrong-headed you are, Monsieur Georget! a body can’t give you a little advice, eh?”

But the young messenger was no longer listening to the pretty flower girl; he walked away with a very pronounced frown, and sat down upon one of the steps of the Château d’Eau. He had hardly settled down when another youngster of nineteen, tall, strong and active, with his cap cocked over one ear in true roistering fashion, came and stood in front of him, crying:

“Ah! here’s Georget! here’s my little Georget! I am glad of that; I thought he must have been swallowed by the whale on exhibition over yonder, behind us. To be sure, I know that it isn’t alive; but never mind, you might have crawled into its mouth. I say, Georget, have you seen the whale?”

“Let me alone, I don’t feel like talking!”

“Well! I paid to see the whale, because as I’d never seen the sea, I said to myself: ‘That will give me an idea of its inhabitants.’—But confound it! how I was sold! Just fancy—I went into a long, narrow place, like a corridor with boarded walls. I couldn’t see anything, no water at all. I said to myself: ‘Where in the deuce is the whale?’ but there was a fellow in a sailor’s suit, walking up and down the corridor, singing out at the top of his lungs: ‘See, ladies and gentlemen, look, examine this rare animal! It’s the first whale that’s been seen in France since the Roman conquest! It was harpooned at Havre and would have been brought to Paris alive, if there had been room enough for it in a first-class carriage!’—When I heard that, I squinted up my eyes to find the marine monster. When I first went into the corridor, I had noticed something like a pile of earth, on the floor between two boards, and I said to myself: ‘It seems that they are going to plant flowers in the place to brighten it up!’ But not at all: that black thing, between two boards, was the whale! I discovered it when I reached the end of the corridor, because then I saw a kind of head, with a beard, at one end of what I had taken for earth. I was mad, I tell you! I regretted my money, and I said to the sailor: ‘If you’d told me beforehand that I was going to see a whale in a box, and dry as a herring, I wouldn’t have come into your old barrack!’—Well, little Georget, why don’t you laugh?”

“I tell you to let me alone, I don’t feel like laughing!”

“Why, what under the sun is the matter with the little mummy! He’s got to be as melancholy as an empty stomach for some time past! Come, I propose to cheer you up; I’ll treat you to a glass at the wine merchant’s on Rue Basse.”

“Thanks, I am not thirsty.”

“And then you will come to the theatre this evening with me. I don’t mean the Délasses, or the Funambs, or the Petit-Lazare; I go to the big theatres now; I have become an habitué of the Folies-Dramatiques! Nothing less! You see, when one has seen Mamzelle Duplessis, in ‘Une Mauvaise Nuit Est Bientôt Passée,’ one doesn’t care to see anything else! It is magnificent! Mamzelle Duplessis is in a night jacket embroidered with lace, like a bride preparing to retire. Dieu! how lovely she is! I dream of her every night as I go to bed! And then, Monsieur Christian, in ‘La Perruque de Mon Oncle!’ When he says: ‘Ah! fichtre! sacrebleu! hush or I will thrash you!’ or something else in that line, I tell you it’s amusing! I laugh until I make a show of myself! And just now Monsieur Christian passed here—you didn’t see him—the real man, the one who plays at the Folies; and he bought a bunch of violets, and smiled because I said to him: ‘Monsieur Christian, do you want me to carry you?’—Ha! ha! that made him laugh!—Well, Georget, I say, Georget! you little wretch of a Georget! what in the world has somebody been doing to you, Gringalet?”

“If you call me Gringalet, I’ll punch your head, do you understand?”

“Oho! how ugly the little rascal is! What have you been treading on to-day?”

“I may be small without being a Gringalet, or a wretch. I am seventeen years, eight months and ten days.”

“You look as if you were about twelve or less!”

“The looks make no difference; I am not a child any more, and I don’t propose to be treated like an urchin.”

“Ah! you wish to be looked up to, perhaps?”

“If anyone insults me, he must fight me.”

“Tell me what you have eaten this morning? You are not so ugly as this usually!”

“But you are teasing me! saying things that make me angry!”

“Then as I am in the wrong, thrash me right away and let’s have it over with! But I don’t propose to fight with you, because I am your friend, and I like you with all your ill-humor! Come, strike me!”

As he spoke, Chicotin Patatras—for such was the name of this last individual—coolly planted himself in front of his friend, and stooped as if he were all ready to be beaten. But when he saw that, Georget rose, his anger vanished, and he offered his hand to his comrade, saying:

“Can you think of such a thing? I, strike you! that would be pretty! Come, it is all over, I am not angry any more; nor you either, are you?”

“Oh! I haven’t been at all!”

“You see, Chicotin, there are many people who say that you are a ne’er-do-well, a brawler, and a sot; they have nicknamed you Patatras, because wherever you go, you always arrive like a bomb and turn everything topsy-turvy! But I do you justice, and I have always defended you; and if you are noisy, and if you do sometimes throw a whole company into confusion, you have a good heart all the same, and when you are fond of anybody, he can always rely on you.”

“Pardi! a man is a good friend, or he isn’t. A door is open or shut, one or the other! that’s all I know!—Well, will you go to the Folies-Dramatiques with me to-night? I’ll treat you; I have some cash; I carried a bouquet to the young lady! Ah! bless my soul! that bouquet evidently gave pleasure, for she put five francs in my hand; the gentleman had given me as much! in all, two hind wheels, six times as much as the bouquet was worth! But these lovers! tell me who else is so generous, when they are satisfied, and are in funds? ‘Tis love, love, love, that makes the world go round!”

“Oh, yes! the rich lovers, they are happy enough! they can make their sweethearts handsome presents!”

“Bah! they are not the ones I envy, especially as I have noticed that the ones